All before I have even had a drop of coffee

I have been up since just after 3:00. I don't know why. It is especially irritating because I did not go to bed until midnight. When I say I don't know why, I may be fibbing a little. I have a bad case of heartburn. I feel it all the way into my throat. I took a couple of antacids and drank a big slug of generic Malox, to no avail. I am a bit confused by the acid reflux. I had the most benign of meals for dinner last night - chicken and noodles.

I have sat here in my office surfing the interwebz in the dark. Yesterday my brain prompted me with a memory from a nearly forgotten class in European history where one single lecture focused on the post WWI cultural, artistic, and scientific movements in Weimar Berlin. For some reason the phrase "Berlin Modeling School" came to mind. I suppose the professor was talking about the Bauhaus School. 1920's Berlin led me to more than two hours of surface research on art, Dadaism, architecture, literature, cinema, cabarets, and even some YouTube clips of some famous Kaberet performers. That led me to Christopher Isherwood. Descriptions of his books led me to think about Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

This led me to a fuzzy thesis regarding the 20's and the decadence of the "lost generation". I wondered why the post war years after The Great War led to the libertine 1920's and the post WWII years led to unprecedented economic and technological growth. Then I decided I didn't really care and that someone else has likely published whole denuded forests worth of paper on the subject. Finally, I decided that it is all just too much work for a predawn Monday mind.

Historian Barbara Tuchman was entirely correct when she stated that research is endlessly seductive.

And thus you get a glimpse into my head. It is often not a fun place to be.