[xubuntu-users] Panel being difficult

[MR ZenWiz]

I just upgraded (via reinstall) my home desktop to Trusty (14.04.1),
and the panel is being difficult.

I run it with a dark background, so I need the items to show up with
white foreground and dark background.  Instead, the clock only shows
the foreground, which is black and thus illegible, and the workspace
switchers and the CPU graphs are all with a background so light I
can't read anything in them.

Isn't there a way to configure the panel items for dark backgrounds?
This wasn't a problem in Precise (12.04).

Thanks.
MR