Dear Readers,

Thank you all for reading this site for the past three and a half years. It's been great. However, the past couple of weeks have made me all too aware of a certain truth; one I've been trying to excuse and tolerate for too long. Now I feel the situation has progressed beyond my control, and I just don't feel I can continue.

For at least the past year, I’d made several concerted efforts to make it known that this site is called Pound, not Poundy. For instance, I made a large graphic that said "POUND" and put it on the site. When it seemed like people weren't paying attention to that, I redesigned the site. This last time I tried to make the word Pound very big. It didn't work.

Inevitably, people have been linking to the site, saying things like, "I like that site Poundy," or "I found this online journal called Poundy." To some extent all this is understandable. "Poundy.com," it would seem, is a very catchy url. I hadn't really intended that. Pound.com" was taken, and in an idle moment that I now regret, I typed that little "y" on the end and registered this domain.

I never felt like I really chose that "Y." It's not my Y. It may seem like such a little thing, but that Y, for me, has come to represent a very particular torment--the letter itself, in fact, with its hanging arms, resembles a figure under torture: this Y is the crooked cross I have had to bear. I've borne it grudgingly until now. In retrospect I think a lot of my humor here at Pound came out of a need to hide all that resentment.

I've been very dismayed by the tendency for people to refer to me personally as "Poundy." Again, at first I could understand that the sound of it was close enough to my name, which is Wendy. Did you know my name is Wendy? Did it seem to you that I just wouldn't mind that you consider my name completely interchangeable with a hastily chosen url? Would you call me "Poundy" in person? Would that not sound strange? Why, then, is it acceptable to call me that in an online context? Am I somehow less of a person? Am I just some kind of a signifier now?

Again, this may seem like a really small thing, but I don't think so. I think it's a sign of a greater decline in values somehow.

You know, I also tried by putting the # sign up all over the place. Was it clear that it was a Pound sign? Too oblique? I hoped it would be subliminal and stuff.

It’s also been suggested by friends of mine that maybe right now all this stress from the surge of new traffic for the WW recipe cards has just made me more sensitive than usual. Those "friends" don't know how it feels to be called "Poundy." How it feels to say, "look, my site is called Pound and my name is Wendy," and to be met with an indifferent silence that seems to say, "Yeah, whatever, Poundy."

As far as the matter with the cards are concerned, that problem has been solved. I've gotten an offer for the WW cards section, and starting this Thursday they'll be on a completely new site where you'll get to view the recipe cards for free, though I think there'll be an ad between each recipe card page, or one ad every two pages or something like that. I don't know all the details yet. It's fine with me, I guess.

Anyway, I am looking to make peace with the poundy, and I think that means just taking everything down. If you have any questions or would like me to reconsider, you can email me. I promise that for once I'll respond to each and every email.

Love,

Wendy. Of Pound.