Ok, I should really read my messages more carefully before posting, I apologize.
This is what i'm envisioning "Python Mail Service is running..." <user presses S or something> Status is printed like: "Current Statistics" Messages retrieved : 12345 Errors: 123 Total Files Written: 12345 Like that - again, apologies for my lack of detail in the first message -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list