Ok, I found that I had X11forwarding set to No in ssh_config.  I actually did not but something changed it, probably a Ubuntu upgrade.  Setting that to Yes made it work again.

     But now here is the deeper mystery, there is something in my .home directory also affecting this, because even when set to No, if I started with a clean directory it worked, if I ssh -X to another machine it worked, or if I ssh -X to another account on eskimo.com, it worked.

     So it would seem something in my home directory overrides the ssh_config settings and made it work and that got blitzed.  But I don’t know what that is.  So I am functional again but really would like to have a deeper understanding.