Hi Caridad,
Thank you so much for getting back to me so quickly. It turns out this is some type of bug with 3.8.1. it occurred in a fresh install, without any plugins at all. I did a lot of research on it, and couldn't find a solution that worked. Though it may be the version of image magik on the server I was using.
I ended up moving everything to Blue Host, where 3.8.1 + Toolset plugins works great.
Sharon