So to be clear, Hiram, you agree that "pleasure," and not "ataraxia," is the goal of life articulated by Epicurus?
Correct, plesure is the end.
That ataraxia is the end has never been stated by anyone in Epicurean philosophy "Pleasure is the end".
But as someone who has embraced the idea of the teaching mission of the Epicurean Gardens, I don't think it's healthy to shun the word "ataraxia" without, later, re-visiting the word within its proper context and with its proper proportion and place in the doctrine. If we dismiss ataraxia without discussing what it is and what its role is, that does not serve the teaching mission.
Yes pleasure is the end, but how do we go about living pleasantly in the real, contextual, complicated reality that we inhabit? To dismiss ataraxia is to impede our teaching from being contextualized and lived. Right now the world is being shaken by earthquakes and volcanoes (Puerto Rico, Indonesia, Philippines, New York, Delaware, and now Alaska) and there are priests everywhere inviting people to get on their knees and turn themselves over to a deity that is imagined as a cosmic Saddam Hussein. You can't live pleasantly if you don't study nature enough to understand that this is unnecessary. So ataraxia, the demeanor and disposition of someone who is without apprehensions about natural phenomena, someone who is confident to get the natural and necessary goods, is necessary to live pleasantly. THIS TOO is part of the doctrine, and without it you can't connect theory and practice as an Epicurean.