My first post became unpublished while I was drafting another one. The entry for it was still listed (as a draft), but the body of the post was gone. Fortunately I still had a draft on my computer, which I just reposted. It is at the same permalink, so I really have no idea what just happened. I think I remembered all the corrections I made to the post the first time.
I probably screwed something up, but looking through the UI I don't see any obvious way to unpost a story without deleting the entry, so I am not sure what happened. Yet again consumer level computer products defeat me.
On well, you live and you learn. From now on I am copy copies of the all the final raw posts on a local system.