Hi Ranmaero ... thanks for helping. Seems like this should be easy to do. However, as a newby I'm clearly missing something. I opened gedit as sudo and tried to save the file as you suggested but received an error that I'm not sure what to do with.
gedit message set document metadata failed
setting attribute metadata
gedit encoding not supported
I did a little digging but really didn't find an explanation. However, I did find someone who 'resolved' the problem by entering the command "$ sudo rmmod ideapad_laptop" each time after he boots. That did indeed work and I have wireless for the first time but clearly I will eventually need to find a more satisfying solution. (Or maybe Lenovo will eventually really support Linux more responsively.)
I do appreciate the help I have found in this community and will endeavor to improve my skills so I can be more self-sufficient and, perhaps, even help others in the future.