I am embarrassed that I did not think to do, as a last step, checking with an autolevel!  (#612)  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  I take my new modified pledge:

Never submit anything any time without a final round of setting endpoints and correcting color.... AND checking with autoTone. 

I've been spending all morning looking at a number of things I correct in my own work... and the autolevel tells me that I somehow drifted into picking a much darker image that is not attractive. 

This is going to pay dividends for all my future work.  Thank you Dan for helping me.