OK, the mystery deepens. I now have ended up with 3 windows open on TB...see below.....and when I click on the icon this black box appears. I cannot click on any of the commands in the box. When I issue thunderbird -kill on the command line, nothing happens! What the devil is going on?

I managed to capture this from my terminal:

~$ thunderbird -kill [calBackendLoader] Using Thunderbird's libical backend Warning: unrecognized command line flag -kill console.debug: "Successfully loaded OpenPGP library librnp.so version 0.14+git20210121.7c8492b4.MZLA from /usr/lib/thunderbird/librnp.so" console.warn: "[l10nregistry] Attempting to synchronously load file\n resource:///chrome/en-US/locale/en-US/calendar/messenger/openpgp/msgReadStatus.ftl while it's being loaded asynchronously." JavaScript error: resource://gre/modules/ActorManagerChild.jsm, line 297: TypeError: singletons is null JavaScript error: resource://gre/modules/ActorManagerChild.jsm, line 297: TypeError: singletons is null JavaScript error: resource://gre/modules/ActorManagerChild.jsm, line 297: TypeError: singletons is null console.debug: "Trying to load /usr/lib/thunderbird/libotr.so.5" console.debug: "Trying to load libotr.so.5 from system's standard library locations" console.debug: "Trying to load libotr.so from system's standard library locations" console.log: (new Error("Cannot load required OTR library", "resource:///modules/OTRLib.jsm", 91)) Extension error: Error while loading 'jar:file:///usr/lib/thunderbird/extensions/messagingmenu@mozilla.com.xpi!/manifest.json' (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND) resource://gre/modules/Extension.jsm:570 :: readJSON/</<@resource://gre/modules/Extension.jsm:570:20 onStopRequest@resource://gre/modules/NetUtil.jsm:128:18 </p>

Extension error: Error while loading 'jar:file:///usr/lib/thunderbird/omni.ja!/chrome/messenger/search-extensions/twitter/manifest.json' (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND) resource://gre/modules/Extension.jsm:570 :: readJSON/</<@resource://gre/modules/Extension.jsm:570:20 onStopRequest@resource://gre/modules/NetUtil.jsm:128:18 </p>

console.debug: "Found 0 public keys and 0 secret keys (0 protected, 0 unprotected)" console.debug: "Successfully loaded optional OpenPGP library libgpgme.so.11 from system's standard library locations" console.debug: "gpgme version: 1.14.0-unknown"

Actually what seems to happen is that when I send an email (this does not happen if I reply) a second version of TB opens......and that is what causes the extra orange dots on the icon....but why would a new version open when I write an email???

MORE!

[2021-08-12T21:02:33Z ERROR style::stylesheets::rule_parser] Saw @import rule, but no way to trigger the load [2021-08-12T21:02:42Z ERROR style::stylesheets::rule_parser] Saw @import rule, but no way to trigger the load [2021-08-12T21:03:59Z ERROR style::stylesheets::rule_parser] Saw @import rule, but no way to trigger the load JavaScript error: resource:///modules/AddrBookCard.jsm, line 197: NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE: PreferDisplayName: undefined - not a boolean

The thunderbird -kill command output did not terminate (as above)...it just paused at the last line above....when left to its own devices, it spewed out the lines above.

Does anybody know what is going on here?

Actually, I just realized that that last post was not a termination of the command either, it was still open...

When I reboot, the second/third/fourth - depending on how many emails I have sent vanishes and we are back to just one version.

So, after all that information above, it seems i all boils down to ....how do I stop having a new pop-out menu every time I write a new email. I am using TB 78.11..

Does anybody know how to stop the pop out window please?