Has anyone yet figured out why, after running for while, the Xmacbsd 
suddenly stops recognizing the keystroke 'a'?  Other keystrokes work just 
fine (including 'A'), and the 'a' works great after killing X.

Also, it seems that, once this happens, the 'a' is gone for good.  
Restarting X doesn't get the 'a' back.  And, after a while, something 
starts eating the keystroke that follows the 'a' regardless of what 
keystroke it is.  (I managed to get around this for a while, by selecting 
something that had an 'a' in it, and then just pasting that in every time 
I needed an 'a' but that gets pretty tiring after a while given the 
amount of stretching required to get the left hand's pinky to push both 
the command and left-arrow keys :)