writer update not working

This is the third time I’ve tried to ask my question!
I’ve been happily using LibreOffice forever and OpenOffice before that. I updated and made a donation yesterday, and today I couldn’t launch the app - not from the desktop, not from my library.
So I uninstalled and reinstalled, and now the app launches, and it clears the screen to a soft grey, but there are no dropdown menus, no cursor, and no text - just the row of icons at the top and the row of stats at the bottom indicating that I have a 10-page document with X number of words, etc.
So I tried clicking the New icon, and it gave a new, unshadowed screen, but still there were no menu and no cursor.
WTF???