A banana republic is a country with an economy of state capitalism, whereby the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class.  Such exploitation is enabled by collusion between the state and favored economic monopolies, in which the profit, derived from the private exploitation of public lands, is private property, while the debts incurred thereby are the financial responsibility of the public treasury.  Such an imbalanced economy remains limited by the uneven economic development of town and country, and usually reduces the national currency into devalued banknotes (paper money), rendering the country ineligible for international development credit.   In the 19th century, the American writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862–1910) coined the term banana republic to describe the fictional Republic of Anchuria in the book Cabbages and Kings (1904), a collection of thematically related short stories inspired by his experiences in Honduras, where he lived for six months until January 1897, hiding in a hotel while he was wanted in the U.S. for embezzlement from a bank.  In the early 20th century, the United Fruit Company, a multinational American corporation, was instrumental in the creation of the banana republic phenomenon.  Together with other American corporations, such as the Cuyamel Fruit Company, and with occasional support from the United States government, the corporations created the political, economic, and social circumstances that established banana republics in Central American countries such as Honduras and Guatemala.  The history of the banana republic began with the introduction of the banana fruit to the U.S. in 1870, by Lorenzo Dow Baker, captain of the schooner Telegraph, who bought bananas in Jamaica and sold them in Boston at a 1,000% profit.  The banana proved popular with Americans, as a nutritious tropical fruit that was less expensive than locally grown fruit in the U.S., such as apples.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic

William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) was born on a plantation in Greensboro, North Carolina on September 11, 1862.  In 1882, prompted by ill health, he moved to a ranch in West Texas.  Two years later, he moved to Austin where he resided until 1898.  During Porter's early years in the city, he held several jobs.  He was a pharmacist at the Morley Drug Store, a bookkeeper for Joe Harrell, and later, a clerk at Maddox Brothers and Anderson, general land agents.  As a bachelor, he enjoyed singing with the Hill City Quartet, known for serenading young women on the streets of Austin.  The group also entertained at local weddings, church festivals, and picnics.  Porter was a frequenter of the Bismark Saloon, his favorite "watering hole".  The Rolling Stone, his 1894 venture in writing and publishing a newspaper, gained a healthy circulation of about 1000 in a city of 11,000.  Despite public interest, Porter was unable to make a profit and stopped production after a year.  Further disappointments ensued when discrepancies in his accounting at the bank amounted to over $4000, demanding his resignation.  Porter removed himself to Houston where he wrote a column for the Houston Post.  To avoid an embezzlement trial, he fled to New Orleans and embarked on a steamer to Honduras.  In his desperate situation, he impulsively planned to wait out the statute of limitations in Central America, but he abandoned this plan when he got word that his wife was about to die.  He returned to Austin to care for her and to await his trial. Shortly after his wife's death in 1897, William Porter was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to five years in the federal penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio and he never returned to Texas.  After his release from prison, Porter moved briefly to Pittsburgh and then to New York City, where he established residency.  While in prison, Will Porter adopted the pen name O. Henry and began his career as a short story writer.  His work was prolific but began to decline, along with his health, after 1907.  O. Henry died in New York City in 1910, prior to his forty-eighth birthday.  His legacy continues in the O. Henry Award, one of the most prestigious short story prizes in America.  https://library.austintexas.gov/ahc/o-henry-biography-352976 

Our word, "arugula," wasn't all that commonly used in the U.S. until the 1980s, when it started catching on in trendy food circles.  Before then, it was mostly used among Italian-Americans, who used the word "rucola" or "arugula" to refer to the plant, depending on what part of the Old Country they came from.  Rucola is the Standard Italian word for the plant today, but the OED notes that the word in Calabria (the toe of the boot) is aruculu.  Most Italian emigrants to the U.S. came from the South, bringing their dialects with them, so it makes sense that the calabrese term (or something similar) would be the one to filter into American English.  "Rocket," on the other hand, came up to English from a northern Italian dialect word, ruchetta, which worked its way over the Alps and became the French roquette.  Englishmen then did away with the poncy French "qu," turned that feminine "ette" into a more utilitarian "et," and ended up with "rocket."  Sam Dean  https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/ingredients/article/the-etymology-of-the-word-arugula  See also https://oldwayspt.org/recipes/marinated-chickpea-arugula-salad-insalata-di-ceci-e-ruchetta 

The phrase going to hell in a handbasket is an American invention, and that it first appeared in print, as far as we know, in 1865:  “Thousands of our best men were prisoners in Camp Douglas, and if once at liberty would ‘send abolitionists to hell in a hand basket.'”  The question, of course, is “why a handbasket”?   Is there something particularly diabolical about handbaskets (small baskets with handles, usually used for carrying fruit or flowers) that makes them suitable for conveying one to Hades?   The answer appears to be no, since “going to hell in a handcart” seems to be a popular variant in Britain, and “going to hell in a bucket” is popular on the internet (as well as a wide variety of lame puns such as “going to hell in a Hummer” and “in a handbag”).  I think the addition of “in a handbasket” (or “handcart”) served two  purposes.  The first is simple alliteration, always a good way to make a phrase catchy and memorable.  The second, the idea of being carried to hell in a basket or cart, makes the journey more concrete in the listener’s mind, since “go to hell” by itself is a worn phrase hardly anyone takes literally anymore.  The basket or cart also implies swift and irrevocable transport to doom.  http://www.word-detective.com/2009/02/hell-in-a-handbasket/

"Going to hell in a handbasket", "going to hell in a handcart", "going to hell in a handbag", "go to hell in a bucket", "sending something to hell in a handbasket" and "something being like hell in a handbasket" are variations on an American allegorical locution of unclear origin, which describes a situation headed for disaster inescapably or precipitately.  I. Winslow Ayer's 1865 polemic alleges, "Judge Morris of the Circuit Court of Illinois at an August meeting of Order of the Sons of Liberty said:  "Thousands of our best men were prisoners in Camp Douglas, and if once at liberty would 'send abolitionists to hell in a hand basket.'"  The origin of the phrase although much debated has been attributed to the gold rush where men were lowered by hand in baskets down mining shafts to set dynamite which could have deadly consequences.   However, the usage probably dates much earlier with either the baskets used to catch guillotined heads or maybe as far back as the Bible’s account in Exodus of Moses being placed in a handmade basket.  As a consequence, the earlier usages date back to the Journal entitled Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome:  or, The history of popery, dating from 1862 that stated: " . . . that noise of a Popish Plot was nothing in the world but an intrigue of the Whigs to destroy the Kings best Friends, and the Devil fetch me to Hell in a Hand basket, if I might have my will, there should not be one Fanatical Dog left alive in the three Kingdoms."  This would make the saying not of U.S. origin.  Even earlier iterations of this phrase are "go to hell in a wheelbarrow" and "go to hell in a handcart".  Evidently, the idea of being carted to hell in a wheelbarrow can be seen on such religious iconography as the stained glass windows of Fairford Church in Gloucestershire and Hieronymus Bosch's painting The Haywain, circa 1515, and was used in sermons dating back to 1841.  Find uses in popular culture at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_hell_in_a_handbasket 

Top 10 novels told in a single day by James Clammer   From James Joyce and Virginia Woolf to Nicholson Baker, the ‘circadian novel’ can pack lifetimes of experience into 24 hours.  The ten examples deserving of measurement against the finest atomic clock range from #1, Ulysses by James Joyce to #10, Pincher Martin by William Golding.  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/09/top-10-novels-told-in-a-single-day-james-clammer-insignificance 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2392  July 19, 2021