Richard Fausset

2/ When i was in PR covering the storm's aftermath, the tragedy & devastation crowded out nearly everything--& yet the beauty & soul & depth of the people & culture was unavoidable. It is a tangible thing, tangible as any building, & @sebmodak gets at that in his piece, ...

3/ ... which starts with a vivid description of musicians rocking the traditional musical styles of bomba & plena in Santurce. Post-storm, this is ALL rebel music: all raging against the dying of the light, &c. No storm, no amount of neglect from DC is going to kill this.

4/ Anyhow, i'm a New Orleans person & am about to take my kids to the Mardi Gras, & so of course I'm nerding out & forcing them to learn the difference btw the clave & the bamboula beats that drive nola street music, & knowing the pain & sense of abandonment in both places...

5/ ...i was overcome with emotion reading seb's scene, of people simply dancing, drinking a cold one, hanging out... particularly on a MONDAY night, which, of course, rings in consonance w/ the spirit of the place where i grew up. And then......

6/ I flashed back to a moment when I was with photojournalist @dennismanuel1 , one of the great brave reporters doing the post-storm heavy lifting. We were finishing a day on half-devastated St. Croix, which we had helicoptered onto from San Juan...

7/ ...& we had somehow landed a room in a un-devastated hotel & had a second to just rest & talk. Because i'm a nerd like that, I asked Dennis to tell me five classic songs that spoke to the puerto rican experience. Here they are, for yr consideration/Spotify list inclusion...

8/ ... & all of them reminders of the resilience & hope & pain & straight-up genius of our fellow Americans & fellow humans in Puerto Rico:

9/ "Lamento Borincano," by the composer Rafael Hernandez, performed here by Marc Anthony, about a jibaro who comes to the city with stuff that nobody wants to buy. This arrangement is like a boricua stairway to heaven, opening softly, only to explode : https://www.google.com/search?q=lamento+borincano+marc+anthony&oq=lamento+borincano+marc+ant&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l4.5101j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 …