restoring ~/.gnupg folder

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   Looking at the list of files in ~/.gnupg, it looks like maybe I
   should chmod 644 a few of them.

Only if you want everyone to be able to read you secret key!  Better
used 600.

   [root at moe root]# ll /home/charles/.gnupg
   total 32
   -r--r--r--    1 charles  charles      8075 Jan 30 20:52 gpg.conf
   -r--r--r--    1 charles  charles       894 Jan 31 15:05 gpgkey.asc (my saved 
   key)
   -r--r--r--    1 charles  charles       902 Jan 31 14:19 pubring.gpg
   -r--r--r--    1 charles  charles       600 Feb  2 13:43 random_seed
   -r--r--r--    1 charles  charles       279 Jan 31 15:11 revcert.asc (my saved 
   revocation certificate)
   -r--r--r--    1 charles  charles      1040 Jan 31 14:19 secring.gpg
   -r--r--r--    1 charles  charles      1280 Jan 31 14:22 trustdb.gpg

   Can I recover from the present situation, and if so, how?

Fix the permissions on the files.

Cheers.