When I started this blog I looked for a name that would convey something about my new roots: that I live on a lovely, relatively unspoiled sub-tropical island on the southwest coast of Florida. Island Pundit and Island Hawk sounded too pretentious, so I decided on Island Turtle because it was whimsical nonsense, in the same vein as Little Green Footballs. I was lucky enough to find non-copyrighted clip art for my logo, which I really like. But I never thought I had a fascination with turtles, until I started cleaning up the house this afternoon for dinner guests. There in a corner of our bookcases was a collection of four turtles my wife and I accumulated over the years.
The first and the third are my favorites. The black one was given to me by a co-worker who exchanged gifts with me and is a handicraft probably from the Solomon Is
lands, where she and her husband scuba dived. The third is from a gift shop at the main lodge at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was created by Jon Anderson from acrylic clay, using a technique called
millifiori, which is too complicated to go into here, even if I did understand it. No paint or decals are used. The other two are of questionable origin, most likely from local Sanibel art fairs.
The one problem I have had with the name Island Turtle is Google won’t direct you to this site. It doesn’t differentiate between Island Turtle and Turtle Island. And there are a gazillion Turtle Islands. It will lead you to this site if you use
island turtle blog,
island turtle blogspot or the single word
islandturtle. Better yet, bookmark it.
Last Saturday was World Turtle Day, a fact I missed until my wife told me. Island Turtle doesn’t miss much, but he
sure did on that one. 
restaurant on Sanibel. The next day we took my daughter and the grandkids to Cabbage Key and ran into 3 gopher tortoises within 20 yards of the restaurant. Now it probably wasn’t just Turtle Day that got them moving, it’s (to put it nicely) socializing season, where boy turtle meets girl turtle. 
