Great news for all of you, like me, who needs to chew each paragraph separately --- the peas cannot touch the corn cannot touch the mashed potatoes:
Kovid has written me off-site and given me a simple style sheet override for Calibre's ePub output that separates each paragraph with a line/space:
{{{
p { padding-bottom; 3em; margin-bottom: 3em}
}}}
That's all there is to it --- I've tried it and it works!
Thanks, Kovid --- I must pinch myself now to make sure that I'm not dead and already in Elysium...