I successfully created two pages, which I wanted to be available to link to from within a post. Due to Extreme Strangeness, the titles turned up in the title banner, along with HOME and ABOUT. I bothered Podz and even Andreas with this question. Through more poking around I saw that this problem can be cured by making the stand-alone pages children of another stand alone page. In this template, ABOUT was the only choice. I made the change, and presto, the titles no longer appeared in the banner.
Now, why this occured to begin with...I leave to anyone who might have a clue.