I am new to Hugo. I am trying to get a handle on some basic concepts such as bundles, resources, pages (in hugo speak), etcetera. I am making no progress, so I need to reset.
What is the simplest bare bones template I can install? I tried rolling my own with hugo new theme ... but that is a non-starter!
I recommend Giraffe Academy tutorial to get you started.
Many people find this useful:
Other Recommended material:
I’d also recommend: Hugo 101: Slowstart for beginners
And any Hugo article by Regis: https://regisphilibert.com/tags/hugo/
That is quite useful.
My problem though, is how do a get a image into one of those “blog” posts?
You need to become really familiar with the forums search feature if you want to get your questions answered most efficiently. 
https://discourse.gohugo.io/search?q=image
Also, there is a requesting help page you should be familiar with, mainly because it spells out the reality the effort it may take to learn Hugo.