[VM] Request for howto select email easily

[John Stoffel]

Guys,

I've been a long time user of VM, and I use it to read lots of email,
including a couple of very high volume mailing lists.  I'd like to
usually just delete most of the email, but then go back and un-delete
any emails and threads where certain people have written.  My way to
following only the generally good discussions.

So how would I go about doing this?  I guess I could setup a Macro in
Emacs itself to go about doing this, but that seems clunky and error
prone.  

The basic idea would be:

1. Delete all new emails.
2. Mark all emails from any of the email addresses listed in ????
3. Mark all threads those emails from 2 are in.  Or mark all emails
   with the same subject as those found in 2.
4. Un-delete all those emails.
5. Clear the marks.


Any hints?  My elisp-fu is horribly non-existent.  Wrapping my brain
around lisp is just never going to happen.  Sorry.  :-)

John