There was a time when everyone new that a hand-basket was something that was what the world was going to hell in. It was as my grandmother would say when the evening news was particularly discouraging. "The world is going to hell in a hand-basket and we're all in the same boat." Maybe they took the hand-baskets down in a boat on the River Styx? I never really knew for sure. I just knew it wasn't a good thing. And it seemed inevitable...especially if something didn't change...and change soon.
Back then I would always envision someone loading up all worldly things into a sturdy basket with a solid handle and tying the whole kit and caboodle to a long cable and lowering it directly down into the bowels of the earth. That was where hell was located when I was young. And if we didn't mend our ways, mind our P's and Q's as it were, we would all end up there. So that makes me wonder: what's in your handbasket? As the old saw says, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Perhaps that is what send the basket and the world on the perilous journey to the underworld. It does seem there are lots of good intentions that add up to naught. Is that what is in this proverbial handbasket? A world of good intentions?
This somehow led me to think about that old, old song we all probably sang at one time or another as children, A Tisket, A Tasket. The lyrics went something like:
A-tisket a-tasket
A green and yellow basket
I wrote a letter to my love
And on the way I dropped it
A Tisket A Tasket--Miss Ella Fitzgerald Sings!
Just what is a tisket? Or a tasket for that matter? And does it matter? Especially if we are as this musing started, taking that ride in the handbasket? I just don't know. But if you were to ask Dorothy* as Miss Gulch put her beloved Toto into her handbasket, tisket or tasket, or not, that basket was not headed anywhere good. So I guess it is best to mind your P's and Q's and carry out your good intentions or else....who knows what may happen.
*of Wizard of Oz fame
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