Unable to connect to tor. Are you sure it's running?

what should happen: onioncircuits connects to tor, displays information about active circuits
what does happen:

running onioncircuits only shows a window that says

"You are not connected to Tor yet..."

on the console:

** (onioncircuits:29111): WARNING **: Couldn't connect to accessibility bus: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-8CvdIryUHh: Permission denied
Unable to connect to tor. Are you sure it's running?

(onioncircuits:29111): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: g_dbus_proxy_new_sync: assertion 'G_IS_DBUS_CONNECTION (connection)' failed
Unable to connect to tor. Are you sure it's running?
Unable to connect to tor. Are you sure it's running?
Unable to connect to tor. Are you sure it's running?
...
(this message is repeated until I close onioncircuits)

* Various instances of tor seem to be running 'fine' - tor-browser, torchat, ricochet and a web browser connecting to localhost:9050 access tor just fine.
* User in question is a member of debian-tor.

onioncircuits: 0.4-4
ubuntu: 17.10 artful

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: onioncircuits 0.4-4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-19.22-generic 4.13.13
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-19-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu3.6
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Tue Dec 19 14:47:40 2017
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-04-18 (245 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.04 "Zesty Zapus" - Release amd64 (20170412)
JournalErrors:
 Error: command ['journalctl', '-b', '--priority=warning', '--lines=1000'] failed with exit code 1: Hint: You are currently not seeing messages from other users and the system.
       Users in the 'systemd-journal' group can see all messages. Pass -q to
       turn off this notice.
 No journal files were opened due to insufficient permissions.
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: onioncircuits
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to artful on 2017-10-19 (61 days ago)