Re: mailing list integration
If you would like to watch the whole forum, there are lots of RSS feeds set up by default in bbPress (tags, new posts, topics, etc), and you could just have those feeds emailed to you by something like Feedblitz http://www.feedblitz.com
You’re also looking for a way to post to the forum via email though, and I don’t know of a way to do that. I know you can post to a blog via email, but I have not seen anything like that for bbPress (or any other forum actually.)