On Sun, 24 Jun 2018 17:09:02 -0600, Wolfgang Schuster <schuster.wolfgang@gmail.com> wrote:

2. Oddity: Why does the TOC in the attached example default to a monospaced font?

You put \placecontent before \starttext but the default fonts are loaded after \starttext.
When you now put text in a box before \starttext a monospaced font is loaded as replacement for the missing text font.

Ah, new protocol... many thanks.