Finally getting around to asking about the issue that was brought in this question on stack overflow.  This answer is mine and illustrates my issue.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/947195/jquery-ui-sortable-how-can-i-cancel-the-click-event-on-an-item-thats-dragged/2055201#2055201

Basically in the sortable event handlers you get the ui object that surfaces some useful items such as placeholder, sender, etc.  But in some cases it's also useful to be able to get the handle.  My question is would it be practical to include the handle on this object or is there some better way to get at the handle other than doing additional dom querying?