ratpoison not working on macosx after os update

hi.  i am running macosx 10.6.3 and ran "software update" after which
ratpoison doesn't really work.  during initialization, i get lots of
messages like:
----
Can't open display
xtoolwait: unable to open display (/tmp/launch-vIg4BK/org.macosforge.0),
NOT executing xterm
----

(notable is that the actual DISPLAY variable value is
----
/tmp/launch-vIg4BK/org.macosforge.xquartz:0
----
whereas the error message doesn't have the ".xquartz" part of the
string.)

any ideas?  i can sort of limp along.  a few more details are provided
below.  i can provide more details (and try to troubleshoot, or at least
characterize the problem better), but i'm hoping someone else already
knows what the problem might be.

some more details:
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1.  if i say ":getenv DISPLAY", the correct value is displayed.

2.  if i run commands from my initialization script by hand, they seem
to work.

3.  my key bindings, however, don't seem to work.
----

cheers, Greg Minshall