{"id":8022,"date":"2022-05-23T07:18:39","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T13:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/?p=8022"},"modified":"2025-04-26T16:31:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T22:31:14","slug":"out-horse-your-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/?p=8022","title":{"rendered":"Out Horse your Email"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Screenshot-2022-05-23-071513.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8023\" src=\"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Screenshot-2022-05-23-071513.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"618\" height=\"396\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Screenshot-2022-05-23-071513.jpg 618w, https:\/\/sbbch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Screenshot-2022-05-23-071513-300x192.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 618px) 100vw, 618px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<strong>Vacation was an ailing concept before the pandemic; covid finished it off. <\/strong>Oh, we still <em>go<\/em> places, but we never really leave work behind. Whether canoeing, hiking, snorkeling, spelunking or just suntanning, we\u2019re always saddled with answering emails from the office.<\/p>\n<p>Is this writerly chore really inescapable? Neigh. The good people of a small northern nation have a solution: \u201cLet the horses of Iceland reply to your emails while you are on vacation!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a gorgeous (and hilarious) public service announcement posted yesterday, the Icelandic tourist bureau offers the services of three equine secretaries:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Litla Stjarna<\/strong>: Types fast, but might take a nap.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hr\u00edmnir<\/strong>: Assertive. Efficient. Shiny hair.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hekla<\/strong>: Friendly, trained in corporate buzzwords.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The service \u2013 \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/s2.washingtonpost.com\/36e337e\/6287a18c956121755a86d0ed\/596aac03ae7e8a0ef34211c7\/30\/72\/6287a18c956121755a86d0ed\"><strong>Outhorse Your Email<\/strong><\/a>\u201d \u2013 reins in all your correspondence and sends it to a coastal field at the foot of snow-capped mountains. There, majestic horses tap out replies to your emails on a giant keyboard. Or sometimes, they just gallop across the keyboard, which I\u2019ve decided is the way I\u2019m going to start responding to certain people\u2019s messages.<\/p>\n<p>Sigr\u00ed\u00f0ur D\u00f6gg Gu\u00f0mundsd\u00f3ttir, the head of Visit Iceland, the country\u2019s tourist information bureau, tells me, \u201cThe idea, of course, was a bit out there when we first heard this, but we trust the process.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/s2.washingtonpost.com\/36e337f\/6287a18c956121755a86d0ed\/596aac03ae7e8a0ef34211c7\/31\/72\/6287a18c956121755a86d0ed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; color: #006699;\">How Iceland\u2019s horses learned to type emails.<\/span><\/strong><\/a>) She and her team were responding to surveys that suggest 65 percent of people look daily at their work email even while on vacation. \u201cSo we thought, \u2018Okay, here\u2019s a problem. Is there something that Iceland can offer to help?\u2019 And so we employed three Icelandic horses to do just that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To be honest, they are not particularly articulate writers, and their spelling is worse than mine, but once the horses have responded to all your email, you can also ride them around the countryside. \u201cThat,\u201d Gu\u00f0mundsd\u00f3ttir adds, \u201cis actually a wonderful way to experience Iceland.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vacation was an ailing concept before the pandemic; covid finished it off. Oh, we still go places, but we never really leave work behind. Whether canoeing, hiking, snorkeling, spelunking or just suntanning, we\u2019re always saddled with answering emails from the office. Is this writerly chore really inescapable? Neigh. The good people of a small northern [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-around-the-campfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8024,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8022\/revisions\/8024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}