Odd behavior of Debian 10.7 with MATE desktop

[Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net>]

I have just installed Debian 10.7 to my Lenovo T510 Thinkpad having 
copied debian-10.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso to a flash drive [the machine is 
intentionally isolated from the internet].

When logging in as user, everything appears normal.

*HOWEVER* when logged in as "root" the desktop *DOES NOT*:
  1. display a folder titled "root's Home"
  2. display icons for files in /root/Desktop
  3. display icons for file systems mounted when plugging in a flash
     drive [although Caja properly shows them to be in /media/root]

Any ideas? Is this a known bug?
TIA