Python samples not displaying properly

a.k.a. not-so-simple-square.py
I’m sure this is somehting simple like i missed a step. I am very new to all of this (Raspberry PI, Linux, electronics, python, C… You get it. I’m not however new to programming. Just 30 years out of date.)

In any event, if I run the text-sample or the demo from the examples-api-use folder, everything displays properly. However, if I run the runtext.py or simple-square.py from the python/samples folder, you can’t make out what it’s trying to display.

I’m guessing I somehow need to edit (maybe recompile?) some library being called by the python. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thank you.