Spotlight trouble indexing mail in Lion

Having a terrible time with Spotlight perpetually indexing mail.
system log shows
Jul 11 17:01:26 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: [Assigning new unique identifiers to all messages]
Jul 11 17:01:26: --- last message repeated 249 times ---
and of course All messages shows every one of those.
also plenty of messages like
Jul 11 17:03:02 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: %Unterminated mailbox: [email protected].
Jul 11 17:03:02 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: %Unexpected characters at end of address: :;>
Jul 11 17:03:02 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: %Unterminated mailbox: [email protected].
Jul 11 17:03:02 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: %Unexpected characters at end of address: :;>
Jul 11 17:03:04 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: %Missing parameter value: NAME
Jul 11 17:03:04 xxxxx com.apple.mdworker.lsb.0[2660]: %Missing parameter value: FILENAME
-- those seem to be ridiculous errors for Spotlight -- if it can't figure out how to parse some of the info, it should ignore that info.
This continues until the disk cache gets totally overloaded, and the machine slows down.
Only help is to reboot.
I have tried turning off spotlight indexing to delete the spotlight cache (and used Cocktail to delete the Spotlight index)
That was no help.
Also rebuilt all of the mailboxes within the Mail program.
Then turned indexing off and back on.
Still no help.
Just tried deleting a couple of old mailbox entries in ~/Library/Mail
There was an old Unix mailbox there from an early version of OS X, and another one that I could not identify, and should have been deleted long ago.
I know I can turn off the indexing for mail, but that is one area where I would like to keep it.
I haven't tried a reboot since the latest deletes, but seeing the same messages flowing in the logs does not give me much hope.
It may be possible that 1 or 2 bad emails are causing all the trouble, but I am at a loss to find them.
Have 18 different accounts that are active ( I do web work so have webmaster, and other accounts on a number of servers).
Those are a mix of IMAP and POP.
INBOX total is usually kept around 100 emails - almost never goes above 200 unless I am away for an extended time.
Most mail ends up in folders ON MY MAC.
Largest of those has about 1500 messages.
Do not have extra folders on the servers with any of the IMAP accounts.
It is about time I archive some of the older messages, and that may help, but it will take me a while to get to that, and then flush the messages.
Problem occurred after update to Lion.
Did not seem to have the problem with Snow Leopard
Anyone have any other ideas?

I thought I had posted a follow up to this posting, but I guess not.
Soooo, here it is.
The problem was not with Apple Mail.app as it seemed, but actually with Mailsmith.app.
I use it for a number of mail accounts that I want to handle separately from my other mail accounts.
Within that application there is a Spotlight helper/worker
-- /Applications/Mailsmith.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/MailsmithImporter.mdimporter/ --
That is what was causing the problem for me.
Some users remove that section from the application, or do as I did -
Set the folders for Mailsmith mail for privacy in Spotlight.
Note: also set any backups of the Mailsmith mail for privacy also.
I filed a bug report with Mailsmith, but it is still open.
There appear to be a lot of issues with their Spotlight helper through the various versions of OS and Mailsmith.
see their discussion groups -
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/mailsmith-talk/spotlight$ 20indexing
The problem may be with certain emails, attachments, or addresses, don't know.
I am happy excluding that mail from Spotlight, and now my logs don't overflow and crash, the machine goes into deep sleep, and runs much cooler.

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