A teacher once told me, “You can only remember and reason with what has gone in, in the first place.”From the womb on, our brain acts like a sponge, desperately craving input, information, knowledge. In some the pace of input is slower than others, in some the quantity of input is higher and in some the discrimination (filters) over input is more capable. Your parents guided you in early years, “You don’t want to take all that advice from Johnny, he’s a bad boy.” But as you grew older, discrimination, volume and a desire to learn becomes your choice, and your choice alone.That same teacher told me, “Listen and learn.” What I came to understand is that reading is listening to the words in your head, watching is understanding what you see and then listening to your intellect’s interpretation, feeling is listening to your heart’s pangs and joys and what the ears deliver needs the same filter of intellect before you “listen” and store the information away. In the end, you become that which you listened to, stored away, whether it be sight, sound, feeling or taste. That is why learning, learning how to think, to think for oneself, is so critical. There is one lesson parents need to pass to their kids, and teachers need to pass to their pupils, it is learning how to think, to process all that input before accepting it.The brain is your most precious organ. It is like the safety-vault of your life. What you store in there determines every function of your body. That is why mental illness is so crippling, why PTSD for soldiers and victims of violence can alter their very essence, their physical well-being. Simply put, their safety vault has been compromised, who they were has become tainted by what they listened to. Nowadays, if you haven’t learned the lifesaving knack of learning how to think, you are like an unvaccinated child in a disease-ridden hospital ward. You’re going to catch something, maybe everything. And people may look at you and think you’re weird or so far out there as to be considered unbalanced. And in a way you may be, if unbalanced means your hitherto brain was compromised by the intrusion of something so radical and unbalancing that it threw you off-kilter.That’s what brainwashing is all about, or waterboarding torture; it so bombards the brain with input that thinking is impossible. and streams of violent data stream in wreaking havoc with previous thought patterns and storage. Think of a whirlwind in a bank vault with piles of new notes. Everything gets jumbled, flies around, chaos; a broken mind.When trying to understand major issues of today, people are often faced with re-examining what they thought were safely stored true-isms, things they could rely on as untainted. “Stay out of the cold or you’ll catch your death,” no longer works to ward off colds or the flu. We now know better, time to readjust our thinking. “Cover your mouth when you sneeze” — well, yes, but then don’t touch anything as your hand is infected. We learn all the time, adjust thinking, modify stored thoughts.It could be said that if you still believed either of those two quotes, you are unbalanced. Why? Because updated information is common knowledge, and either you are not listening for updates or you are not thinking well enough to accept the updates. In either event, you are out of balance with current societal thinking and knowledge. Does that mean you are crazy? No, this is a simple example, but if you take it to an extreme, it could flag a real problem.“They all had to die,” is a horrible thought from a man with a military weapon (I hate the term assault weapon because it means nothing — a military weapon should only be in the hands of one carefully trained in its use). Clearly this statement shows a deranged mind, but is it really? Such people often were rational, quiet people. The problem was with their capability of thinking and reasoning. You can only reason with what was allowed in. And if you didn’t learn how to think, to assess input, in the first place, or if doctors prescribe drugs which may warp that reasoning capability, then what gets into the vault is especially dangerous.Think what is out there in our modern world of hate talk radio and violent media, commonly available to such people. In the end, the tool is a worry, but unfettered input far more so. Until we realize that the balance of receptive minds is always at risk, society as a whole is at risk of unbalancing itself in a rush to allow everything. Sometimes, mom was right, “Turn that off, I don’t want you listening to that garbage.”Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.
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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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