My thanks to all who have replied to my initial question.

In Ben Parker's first reply he mentioned always having a backup
address as listowner.  Amen.  I've always made sure I have such, and
that important list admin. stuff is sent to more than one of my addresses,
as backup; easy to dump duplicates not needed, but if the stuff is sent
to only one address which ain't currently working, well ...

When I sent my original item I hadn't thought about lists at loc.gov
to which I am subscribed.  Well, I can't send email commands for those
either, same problem.

Ben Parker wrote:
> This lead to a possible conlusion that the A record for backup.ccsi.com had
> been "fat-fingered" and was just plain wrong.  No mail server has answered
> at that FQDN/IP for several days.  But a mail server is answering there now:
>
> 220 backup.ccsi.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.11/8.12.11; Mon, 2 Jan 2006 15:35:22
> -0600 (CST)
>
> Hopefully your mail problems with CCSI are now over.

Maybe, but I'm not sanquine as to that.  I sent a command to a list at
loc.gov near an hour ago and have not yet received a response.

I'll send all the suggestions to my ISP (waiting for the holidays to be
over).

I also have not yet tried to contact the postmaster at loc.gov, for same
"holidays" reason.  The person I've been in contact with at LC, while
he does, I think, run the LISTSERV system there, does not run the mail
system.  He wished me luck in trying to get ccsi.com removed from a
"blacklist", if ccsi.com has been placed on some such, as the email folk
generally ignore requests for such which come from outside LC.

Will let you know how this turns out.

Douglas Winship   [log in to unmask]