I appreciate the input, but did not understand how to make my case work. Thank you to those who responded so unselfishly. I thought I would now dredge up the thread to redirect this, and a couple of other questions about email.
All I want it a copy of my outgoing email and threads thereof (I use Gmail) to be present on my system, so I can search easily. I discovered the variable "message-send-rename function" which should make it relatively easy to set something up. I envision recovering the name of the recipient from the first lines of the message, or else just using the email address as a postfix to save the message in a certain directory, easily accessible from org-mode.
Incidentally, the function "oog" was useful to me for a long time, but for a long while I have been unable to use it. Everytime the following message is typed out in the minibuffer: Wrong type argument: markerp, nil.
Another recent issue for me was that my message buffer wasn't saved, when an unusual event happend on my Arch Linux box, using openbox window manager: emacs locked up, when I was editing a message. It was a long letter related to an employment application, and, as far as I've been able to discover, it was not autosaved at any time duirng the editing of this message (an your or two.) Unusual, especially when I not that an autosave directory has been enabled for messages, by default.
I would like to ask whether someone who understands email can give some advice about these three issues?
Alan