PINE PLAINS — The Pine Plains Board of Education (BOE) met on Wednesday, May 2, for the public hearing on the adopted 2012-13 budget.Along with the budget, Pine Plains voters will be voting on a proposition to purchase six new buses for the district.Former board member and current incumbent for the BOE Todd Bowen spoke up regarding the bus situation.At previous meetings Bowen expressed a need for the board to show that the Department of Transportation should render a bus “decommissioned,” not the district employees.Superintendent Linda Kaumeyer has offered to provide more information regarding the conditions of the buses slated to be replaced.According to Kaumeyer’s written reflections on the board meeting, Bowen spoke up during the hearing after having seen the buses first-hand.“Mr. Bowen reported that he talked with an unidentified person who he considered knowledgeable about the buses. Mr. Bowen stated that after these meetings he now believes that the six older buses should be replaced,” she wrote.During the second public comment former board member Karen Orton spoke up regarding board member absences.Virginia Kemp also questioned why a district would propose the same budget a second time after having been voted down once.Baseball resignationsDuring the meeting the district also accepted, with regret, the formal resignation of longtime varsity baseball coach Phil Amelio and assistant varsity baseball coach John Fraser Paterson. Kaumeyer wrote, “We are sorry that health issues prevent Mr. Amelio from continuing as coach. We wish him a speedy recovery and thank him for his many years of service to our athletes and to our community.”“In over 16 years at Pine Plains, Mr. Amelio has coached more than 200 wins and our varsity athletes captured the 2002 Class C state title. We have won three MHAL [Mid-Hudson Athletic League] titles and won a divisional title last May. We also won Section 9 titles in 2009 and 2010,” she wrote.Kaumeyer also thanked Paterson for his years as a volunteer assistant to Amelio. She noted that the two have coached together for more than 25 years, including Little League.Christopher Hurst and Michael Remsburger have stepped in to finish out the current varsity season.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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