Problem solved, but solution is vague. Here is what I did to resolve it:
I opened pihole -t and started logging. Then I went to github.com and tried to do a direct download of the new FTL distribution. It failed, but I found a few items that had been sent to 0.0.0.0 in the log. I whitelisted each one (there was an AWS domain, a pipe.aria item, and one that was akamaized). The system told me that they were NOT blacklisted, but it went through the motions.
Then I ran pihole -up, and it succeeded.
So I am not sure why this happened, but I'm up to date. Thanks.