Effort on tracking down this error can be found at http://www.phys-x.org/PlanetPhysics/PlanetPhysics.html . I now believe it is not a mysql error but something happens on a query that turns into a cascading error.
I believe the Mysql has gone away error is now fixed. I was able to add multiple entries and edit a few. I changed line 450 in Requests.pm to
my ([Unable to write template]sth)=dbSelect([Unable to write template]table,WHERE=> 'fulfilled is null'}); #,'ORDER BY'=>'lower(title)'});
By getting rid of the ORDER BY part everything seems ok. I figure people can live without a sorted list for now. I do not understand why this would be a problem since the actual mysql statement executes at a mysql prompt. Oh well. More testing is definately needed. This is a short term fix until I learn more about why?
The error returned and now I have replaced the connection call to the database. I am a little confused about what this statement is trying to accomplish:
unless ($dbh ||= dbConnect()) { die "Couldn't open database: ",$DBI::errstr; }
I've replaced it with simply,
$dbh = dbConnect();
More details given at http://www.phys-x.org/PlanetPhysics/PlanetPhysics.html.