but I can't mail grandpa (Score 1)

I mean that literally. Because of AOL's block my wife can't mail her father. My kids can't email their grandfather.

AOL blocks the entire cable modem address space that I'm attached to, so I can't send any mail from my home server. It just disappears. The cablemodem company (Comcast, formerely ATTBI)also provides free connections to many of the local schools, and they can't send mail to people on AOL.

I try to get around AOL's black list by routing mail through my ISP's servers like ordinary customers do, but that still doesn't get mail through reliably!

I agree with the poster who pointed out that AOL is doing this more to reduce the load on their servers than reduce the spam their customers receive. The customer doesn't seem to have any way to introduce exceptions to AOL's black hole policy.

It's kind of hard to explain to get GrandPa to believe that AOL doesn't accept a lot of mail because he gets so much other mail (mostly from other old people on AOL).

I really think AOL is abusing it's market power here.