The problem is solved – thank goodness.
Thanks to a suggestion received after my last blog I took some steps. First, I formatted the flash card to see if it had been corrupted at all. That did not help.
Then I packed up and took the camera over to the store at mall. I asked if they had a spare card I could plug in to see if the same ‘pixie dust’ appeared.
They searched high and low, found one, and in short order I learned that the problem was the card, not the camera. The card was promptly banished, replaced with a new one which thus far appears to work perfectly, and a smile quickly and irrepressibly replaced the frown that had been spreading across my visage.
Now we can resume regular programming.
Here: have a picture: