Thanks for the tips in the other threads Rich, but unfortunately, that fix only works for the current session. It does not survive a reboot - /usr/local/etc/nanorc gets overwritten with the original symlink from the tcloop again.
Note that I am using a stick made with the CorePlus 12 *installer*, not the read-only initial demo so the proper setup for saving backups and changes exists - that was my first thought.
So I did something kinda' ugly.
I copied /usr/local/etc/nanorc symlink to /home/tc/.nanorc as a file to be edited.
I edited "const" to be "constantshow" in the new .nanorc
I then set up an alias to always delete the original symlink if it exists. I put it in my .ashrc
alias nano='sudo rm /usr/local/etc/nanorc ; nano'
This works and survives reboots. My ~.nanorc config file is picked up properly with the change from const to constantshow and it all works. Well to pick up all the colorized including I have to edit those includes, but I'll get to that later. For now the editor isn't complaining for basic text editing.
Perhaps the original op that tested with the fix may not have realized that it only worked in the current session, and even if properly backed up, came back to haunt him when the symlink returned.