Yes, those nonsense messages have to do with MIME.

"Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet Standard that 
extends the format of e-mail to support text in character sets other than 
US-ASCII, non-text attachments, multi-part message bodies, and header 
information in non-ASCII character sets." (from wikipedia)

Generally, you'll see the nonsense characters when someone sends an 
attachment to the list, or a message that's formatted in HTML.

Many email clients support MIME, but some (webmail services especially) 
simply don't. Check your settings or ask your IT folks.

Suzanne Fischer
Hennepin County Medical Center History Museum, Minneapolis

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