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Health & Fitness

A Hardworking Citizen: 100 Reasons I Love Peekskill, Post 24

Acupuncturist and Magician Margaret Steele blogs about living and working in downtown Peekskill.

A Hardworking Citizen. My thermometer says it's 29 degrees out, but it feels colder. I just went out to mail a letter, and there on the corner of Park and Bank Streets was a very cheerful woman in a Statue of Liberty costume handing out special offer cards for Liberty Tax Service. I asked if I could take her photo for my Patch blog, and she said sure. She told me her name was Aminah. I asked if she was cold, standing out there, and she smiled and said she just had another hour to go. Although I'd been out all of five minutes, I was FREEZING, so I wished her luck and hurried home. Now I wish I'd hung out a little longer, just finding out a little more about her story. Anyone willing and able to stand out in this cold for hours in a costume and keep smiling is someone who deserves some respect and attention. If it were I, I'd have a lot of trouble with the smile part.

This is a big difference between NYC and Peekskill. In New York I would never go out of my way to have a conversation with a costumed character on the street. In Peekskill, how could I not? In the city, it's no big deal, but here it's kind of special. In the few minutes I was out, Aminah was a showstopper. Cars were slowing down, and some drivers were so intensely curious that they were forgetting to go when the light turned green.

It kind of made my day.

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