As some of you have pointed out, the photos in my blog disappeared precipitously (and mysteriously). This turned out to be a casualty of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's (LBNL's) adoption of google software. Previously, my blog was linked to my LBNL email address. When LBNL adopted google software, it set up a new superstructure, which required that the blog be associated, at least temporarily, with a different email address. The blog text survived this transfer, but the photos did not.
I have now gone through, and laboriously re-added the photos to the blog, currently with one exception which I will fix later. Although I tried hard, it may be that one or two of the photos different from the original images; since the file names didn't survive the transfer, it is impossible to be sure.
I apologize for the length of time that the blog remained pictureless; it took some time to identify the problem, and even more time to work up the energy to re-create material that disappeared.