This is the second of a two-part series. See the first part at tcextra.com or in last week’s paper. The stress coming from all directions harms students in many ways. On top of school and all that applies to it, teenagers often are encouraged or forced to work a regular job. When students are not returning home until late in the evening or night, they run short on time to study or do homework. As a result, students must stay up late into the night, creating a common lack of proper sleep. In one of the ironies of high school, health class teaches us that, in order to maintain healthy sleeping habits, a teenager must get nine and a quarter hours of sleep every night. However, the average amount of sleep for every student is far less because they are forced to work late into the night on their homework, including health assignments. There is no question as to why kids come into the school without their minds at full throttle. Society practically steals the lives of teenagers in their 11th- and 12th-grade years. Drug abuse may be a result of experimentation, but couldn’t it also be linked to the need for an escape for many young adults? With the pressures from school and work and the social expectations that our society puts on teens, the suicide rate has become very high. Every 100 minutes, a U.S. teen commits suicide in what is the third leading cause of death among people from 14 to 25 years old. Is this corruption of society and education a new curse? I have no way of knowing from experience. However, there was a time in recent American history when money was not of top concern. During the 1960s and 1970s, the youth of the nation began a musical revolution in which the music was appreciated for what it was, not for how much profit it made. The people also began protests, many of which were in the music, for world peace. For once, finances were not the primary driving force among a large part of the society. Perhaps this generation of no-good, life-wasting, drug-addled hippies wasn’t so bad after all.Regardless, when a baby enters the world, he or she is carefree, excited and compelled to learn more and more about the world. When those same children enter school and the pressures to be the best begin to mount, this desire ceases to exist. As a result, all of us students miss a crucial development of our brains. Middle and high school standardizes each student to the same basis of knowledge and social characteristics. However, when applying to colleges, adolescents are told to describe how they are different. To students, my advice is to not worry so strictly about this race. Discover what you truly enjoy or are fascinated by and pursue it by taking classes concerning that topic, even if it means missing out on an AP course that would be useful to impress colleges. In today’s applications to liberal arts colleges, exploratory programs are the most popular by far. Students are so busy worrying about their grades they forget to find what interests them most. Now, to be honest, I am scared to enter the world without any idea of what I want to do with my life. To parents, I say do not be so uptight with your children when they receive poor grades in a course that does not seem to interest them at all. To teachers, don’t put out simple tests and quizzes solely for the purpose of getting more material to attach numbers to the students. Give exams or prompts that require a thorough understanding of the curriculum and, best yet, relate the curriculum to personal experience. Not all classes I have taken have been taught in such a manner. During my sophomore year, my English 10H class had few random quizzes. For the most part, we only wrote essays, dissected novels and listened to the teacher’s philosophical rants. However, I feel I learned more in that class than any other. This year, I took the Philosophy of War originally because I knew it was an H course. To my benefit, it revealed to me many current conflicts and the possible strategies being used in them. But the majority of courses at school do not have this sort of eye-opening effect. This is because students do not care whether they learn but rather if they achieve their own, parents’, teachers’ and all of society’s expectations. The people of this nation need to be less concerned with money and more driven by passion. This, I believe, would not only change our young adults but would also begin to cure many of our culture’s hidden problems. After all, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.” Gabe Lefferts, son of Halleck and Theresa Lefferts of Salisbury, is a senior at Housatonic Valley Regional High School and will be graduating in June.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
Provided
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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