ah ha!
Well, after a couple more months of seeing it and not, I fnially had enough of the engine light to begin taking things apart. 1443 is for the left bank (driver's side) secondary air injection system. Being it's only referring to the left side, that's where my attention focused.
Long winded version below. Scroll to the bottom for the cliff notes.
First took off the check valve that sits above the headers. Actuated it a couple times, checked the two rubber hoses going to it...everything appeared normal. started the car up with the valve back in place, but the vacuum connection off...and only felt a little bit of vacuum. On the right side of the car is a T connection where the vacuum line is split between the left and right check valves. at the T connection, the left (and right) side vacuum lines appeared to have strong vacuum. So, my focus shifted to the area between the left check valve and the T fitting on the right. Vacuum is communicated to the left check valve by a small metal tube at the bottom of the secondary air tube. I stuck a piece of weed wacker string into this small tube (very conveniently sized)...noticed it got stuck over on the right side...towards the bend when it turned from going forward, to across the front of the engine. This happened when inserted from both the left and right sides. Took the secondary air tubing off the front of the engine, looked at the bottom where the vacuum tube runs, and low and behold it had a hole worn into it from rubbing against something. Thats something is a nicely braided stainless steel line that runs right underneath the vacuum/secondary air tube. it was in contact with my tube before removal.
Moral of the story- If you've got this code, check your rubber hoses going to the check valve, then check to see if the bottom of the secondary air pipe/metal vacuum tube is in contact with the braided line on the right side of the car. If so, check for a hole in your metal vacuum tube.
FYI, removing that air pipe is a PITA.