I finally got a round toit to help me with getting this site back up and updated to latest greatest. With the development cycle these days I need to keep a closer eye on it or I'll end up in no-longer-supported-land again.
I hope to have more to write about it because it is one of those "fixing a totally broken platform" stories. For now, all I can say is that Composer 2's switch --ignore-platform-reqs solves all sorts or stuff.
Excelsior true believers!