Add more progress info

It would be helpful for logging/debugging if each function printed out a short statement of what it is doing (or just several print statements as the script progresses through main())

These print statements should probably only be visible if --verbose is True

Start by tracing main() and the functions it calls to understand the script's progress through its work. Check how the --verbose option is parsed and used, then add short progress messages that appear only when it is enabled. Done means the verbose run reports meaningful progress without changing normal output.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.