The first person I ever voted for, former Congressman Peter Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, died May 23 at the age of 95. I don’t remember why I voted for him or who ran against him, but by all accounts, Frelinghuysen was a good choice. He was running for his first term then and he’d be re-elected for the next 20 years. His son occupies the seat now. But then as now, being a Frelinghuysen in New Jersey was quite an advantage. He was a member of a political dynasty that produced, since the 1790s, four United States senators as well as the two House members. One of the senators, Theodore Frelinghuysen, was Henry Clay’s running mate in 1844. They lost, despite their catchy campaign ditty, “Hurrah, Hurrah! The country’s risin’ for Henry Clay and Frelinghuysen.” Theodore was a Whig but my Frelinghuysen was a Republican in a very Republican district. He turned out to be a liberal Republican, a rare species then and practically extinct today. Alf Landon, the 1936 Republican presidential candidate, described them best when he said, “I believe a man can be a liberal without being a spendthrift.”Frelinghuysen was not only my first Republican vote, he was also my last, except for Lowell Weicker, who may have been a Republican one of the times I voted for him. Had 19-year-olds been allowed to vote in 1952, as they can now, Dwight Eisenhower would have been my first vote and first Republican because, having lived under only Democratic presidents in my lifetime, I figured it was time for a change. Besides, being for Eisenhower in Madison, N.J., was a liberal position. My parents and the neighbors supported Robert Taft, “Mr. Republican.”But I didn’t vote for Eisenhower or Democrat Adlai Stevenson four years later. I had just completed basic training at the time and had become disillusioned with both candidates because of the Hungarian Revolution, which broke out just weeks before the 1956 rerun between Eisenhower and Stevenson. When John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s secretary of state, urged the “captive nations” of Eastern Europe to revolt, I naively believed he was telling them the United States would help. And when both Ike and Adlai were silent on helping the Hungarian Freedom Fighters, I rejected both of them. My political thinking hadn’t extended to considering the advisability of getting into a world war at that point.I did support Frelinghuysen’s bid for a second term on my absentee ballot because shortly after his election in 1954, he became one of the first Republicans to speak out against the reprehensible Republican senator, Joe McCarthy.“By remaining silent we permit the public to believe that most Republicans condone the senator’s tactics,” he wrote. “By remaining silent we lend credence to the view that we prefer to risk losing our freedom than to offend a questionable ‘asset’ to our party.” That was heroic talk for a Republican then.Felinghuysen would also be among the Republicans supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He did oppose President Lyndon Johnson’s antipoverty programs, rightly fearing the Great Society would “spawn its own bureaucracy” and “duplicate existing federal programs,” according to his obituary in The New York Times. But unlike today’s Republicans, he offered an alternative, administering some of the same programs through existing agencies.Frelinghuysen’s monument is New Jersey’s Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. Had it not been for the congressman, the 10,000-acre refuge would today be the Great Swamp International Airport. The Port of New York Authority insisted no other site would do for a badly needed fourth Greater New York Airport in 1959, and that may have been true, as no fourth airport has been built in the ensuing 52 years.Had I remained in New Jersey, my voting record, at least for Congress, would have been more bipartisan, but I never found Republican House candidates like Frelinghuysen in the Connecticut districts where I lived and voted beginning in 1958. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I didn’t leave the Republican Party, I left New Jersey. Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.
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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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