It turns out I did have permalinks already (duh!) I didn't like the default format, so I changed it, and now the comments on my earlier blog posts can't be accessed (duh duh!)
So I'm checking to see if the comments will work correctly for this post…
Maybe I should change the name of this blog to "Confessions of a WordPress Newbie."
Hmm, it works now… apparently something needed to update and I was being too impatient.