Got the calendar working.  As a test, I set up the Pat goodale classes in June.
I also set up the signup module for the shotgun class. Works pretty slick.  It is brusque, terse, and just a bit hostile in tone--pretty much what you would expect from a university class sign up module.  I think it could work for signing up for public range days or working partys too.  Future project: make the event/class signup module a little more user-friendly.

My next behind-the-scenes task is to download and individually install a bunch of bug fixes for the individual modules PHPwebsite at app state lists them, but the upgrade module (Boost) on our web site shows  "check disabled" rather than the new version.  It looks like our webhost doesn't support the allow_url_fopen php setting. I tried enabling it via a php.ini file, which failed. Further research shows that our webhost doesn't allow overriding that particular php setting. It seems they believe that in conjunction with badly or insecurely initialized variables this can be used to run code from an attackers website, so no joy. Their apparent solution is "use cURL " which is enabled, but PHPWebsite wont use it.  Bleh...