* Josh's answer seems great.

** I used to use VM in EMACS, worked great, highly recommend it--you could then use EMACS hooks like:

"vm-mail-hook
List of hook functions to be run after a Mail mode composition buffer has been created to send a non specialized message, i.e. a message that is not a reply, forward, digest, etc. VM runs this hook and then runs vm-mail-mode-hook before leaving you in the Mail mode buffer.

--and hook those hooks (the list of hooks is 20+ long) up to creating an OrgMode document---maybe somewhat in the way Josh suggested--e.g.:

(add-hook 'vm-summary-update-hook 'org-capture)

On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 1:24 PM, Alan E. Davis <lngndvs@gmail.com> wrote:
I am partial to just opening a mail buffer and writing email in Emacs.  Just that.  However, it would be great to save a copy in an org file.

An emacs FAQ suggests sending a BCC or FCC to oneself.  What I want is a copy stored in an org-mode subtree, with a convenient headline indicating the name of the recipient and the date.

So far, I haven't gotten my head around the idea of using BABEL, and I still like text for email.     My experiments with GNUS have not been very successful.  So far.

I apologize for the naive level of this and some of my other questions.  Though I may not be getting the maximum usefulness of all of org-mode's features, those features I do use are awesome.   Thank you.

Alan Davis