Some mouse clicks don't work, some do

[Ross Boylan <RossBoylan@stanfordalumni.org>]

I am running woody, with gnome, X 4.0, and sawfish.  sawfish (and
gnome-sawfish) are leftovers from Ximian, but it is mostly a straight
Debian system. 

The mouse is mostly working, but the following things don't work:
left-click or middle click on the desktop.
any click on the upper left icon in the frame around windows.

Right click on desktop brings new/arrange icons/... menu.  I can grab
and move windows around, click on the window control buttons in the
upper right of the window frame, select menu items, ....

I'm not sure how long this has been going on; I think it's been awhile
(at least a couple of weeks).  All of the non working clicks used to
work for me.  (Clicking on the background got me an X program menu or
a list of things like windows or programs I could select; clicking on
the window control got me some sawfish commands.  Or at least, that is
what I thought I was seeing before.)

Can anyone suggest where to look for the problem, or for a fix?

Thanks.