I walked our family’s Boston Terrier in the leftover dark this morning before the sun edged over Wamesit Hill and the far treeline that loosely follows the path of the Concord River. The hem of the sky showed lighter blue, but above the night held. Heading toward Gorham Street I passed the backs of the hardy City Life program hosts in the glowing front window of the McDonough home satellite cable TV broadcast studio. Not quite like being in front of the “Today” show studio’s plate glass in New York City, but the closest thing to it in Lowell. An impossibly early-running yellow school bus rode by. Warmly wrapped sidewalk people made their way in ones and twos to the Gallagher Terminal trains. Entrepreneurial commuters grabbed parking spaces one by one on Highland, beating the daily garage fee. Near the entrance to the Edith Nourse Rogers School the top of one of the tall trees snapped off and is spread on the ground in the last stage of green. At the corner of South Street and Highland stands a robust fully crowned tree that’s always a prize-winner of autumn color—no storm damage, but the color is a slightly less flaming this year. Wednesday is garbage pick-up day, and the maroon wheelie-bins, as they call them in London, line the street. The weather report calls for a warmer day. Two hundred thousand people in Massachusetts still wait for electrical service.