Odd that you mention grounding as a possibility. There is a screw on the frame that is supposed to go to a ground wire, but there is no ground wire in the electrical box so I figured that the screws that now hold the fixture to the box would be sufficient ground. Maybe not?
They're new bulbs - and a much narrower diameter than the old ones.
One more odd thing, though not so odd in my house. The wall switch that operates the light works backwards. On is down. And I can't recall whether that worked that way before. It very well might have and there are two other switches in the house that work that way. I never bothered fixing them. I use this light so infrequently that I just don't recall.
I wondered if that indicates that the wiring in the fixture is backwards, but that doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, the switch is just open/close right? Even if the wires were reversed it doesn't seem that it would make the switch work the inverse way.