Well, it has taken me 7 months (since I last posted--on migrating from Win XP to Ubuntu 9.10)--but by gum, I think I've got it!
For a couple of months now, I've been doing my computer user group (OMUG or Olympia Microcomputer Users Group) newsletter using Presentation (OO.org 3.1.1) (running Ubuntu). I decided to give it a try because it seems much easier to place things on the page than in Writer. One thing that is missing in Presentation is the function of connecting text boxes...