Preston v. Bridgeport



This is the Preston Trading Post.  It was actually a trading post for many years when
Preston was first established.  Today it has become sort of the local furniture store,
though items are ordered through catalogs.  It is also the wood furnace place, the
odds and ends store as well with different trinkets.  This is also the beginning of the
road my house is on! The key landmark guiding all who visit that they are on the
right path:)

As I have begun to pick apart Bridgeport and Preston visually.  I thought it was important to bring out some of the statistics that seperate them even further. 
For instance the population of Bridgeport is 137,298 , whereas Preston is a mere 4,995 strong! This obviously contributes to the amount of families that exist, the median incomes, unemployment rates, and the amount of people in the workforce in general.
The amount of people in Bridgeport that are unemployed, 6,682, exceeds the amount of people that live in my town, with those unemployed in my town equalling 85. 
It is very common in Preston that one of the parents stays home, or has a part time job, with increasing amounts of both parents working over the years, yet the number of families with both parents in the workforce is approximately 145 out of 1,358 families and 1,286 people not in the workforce at all.  In Bridgeport this number is much more dramatic with 7,549 families having both parents in the workforce, out of 33,042 families, and a hugely more significant number of 40,409 people not in the workforce at all. 
The piece that completes the puzzle in a sense of understanding why the quality of life is so different is that the median family income in Bridgport is 39,571, a number that is 48,000 dollars less than the median family income in Fairfield County (77,690).  In Preston the median family income is actually slightly higher than the New London County median salary of 59,857, at 62,554.
In Preston we have large companies around that sort of fuel the economy.  Farms are not as big of money makers as they used to be, but we are lucky enough to have Electric Boat, two casinos, Phizer and many other companies that sort of stimulate the area.  We are located close to major towns, but most of Southeastern, CT is quiet farm towns with people that go about their day as they need to to provide for their families, there is not much of a distraction.


Almost every teenage girl starts her first job here! It is Buttonwood IceCream
Farm. People come here from hours away, especially in the summer when
they have the Sunflower for Wishes, they grow thousands of sunflowers, then
sell them, as well as have hayrides and raise all the money for Make A Wish.
They raise incredible amounts of money, and everyone is drawn to the amazing
homemade icecream they make, right in the back, from the milk of their own
cows.  I myself had the opportunity to help when I worked here.
It is the best ice cream around, and on a nice summer day, each of the 7 windows
will have lines all the way down to this stone wall in front, all day! Delicious!

Bridgeport is in a much different area, where they have a huge amount of people in a bigger city, but an area that does not necessarily have huge corporations that can help out the little man.  Fairfield county is very wealthy, but much of that wealth is divulged from jobs and professions that stem from New York City, wall street, or high profile jobs that require years of education.  For the kids in the Bridgeport, as a result of their parents working hard to provide for their families, are not always given these opportunities because they are forced by natural law to begin working at a young age to help the family with bills.  I never had to experence these things, though I had a job at 16, I was able to keep my money for myself or to pay for myself to do things.  Though I could never picture myself living in Bridgeport, I am sure that a Bridgeport teen could never imagine themselves in my situation either.  These stats really make me think I am fortunate to be where I am from, and for my parents to have been as succesful as they were in establishing their own business, but I cannot say that a Bridgeport teen would want to change their life because perhaps they appreciate all that they have, or could not picture their life different from living close to everything they need.


I have put some more pictures in of my area, I am working on getting pictures of Bridgeport, it is a little bit more difficult because at times I feel a little creepy taking pictures with tons of people around watching me! Haha but I will share with some thoughts as I compile them.

Welcome to Preston!

Good ole Preston!

Over break I was able to take some pictures of my small town. Being that we are entering the summer, you are almost always guaranteed to end up behind a farmer on his tractor traveling through town, as my intro picture so nicely shows you! "Town" for me consists of one real stoplight, one gas station, a firehouse down the road, a small convience store and a Feed and Grain store where you can find all of town on a Sunday afternoon! Next door is the biggest farm in Preston, Woodmansee Farms, next to our elementary school. When I attended our elementary school we had about 11 classrooms with an old gym, and it literally looked like an old school house, they have upgraded quite a bit since then! Our school stands alone in the middle of town, no buildings around it, except the bus depot that sits behind it, one main road that runs in the front, very different from the Bridgeport schools where students walk home every day! I will add more with some more blurbs about my town as I collect and go through them, and begin my comparison of Bridgeport.  It feels like I live a million miles away from this area!

Finding Meaning in Loss...

Going into sophomore year of High school I lost one of my very good friends, Larry, to sudden cardiac arrest. He was fifteen years old and one of the healthiest and most active kids I knew, truly an inspiration to all he met. It was very hard for me and my friends, and our entire highschool communit I deal with his death. But instead of just moving on we immediately knew we needed to do something in his honor to make sure is situation that may have been prevented by a piece of equipment never happened again. I have embedded this video my classmates and I made, which we won a contest for, and it became the face of a national organization for a year. I am not personally in the video but they are dear friends of mine from highschool and we all worked very hard for all the video discusses. My group of friends and I along with an incredible advisor, along with Larry's parents worked diligently for 2 years to get legislation passed to help prevent another family and group of friends from feeling the pain we felt, and still feel today. I just hope to make all of you aware of how important it is to become AED and CPR certified because something like sudden cardiac arrest does not discriminate or hit certain age groups. We all serve each other and ourselves and it is important that we can always be prepared to help those around us as we would want those around us to be able to help us

Suu Kyi wins Myanmar election

I wanted to share this article with the class.  I am not sure many people are aware of the situation but Myanmar had been under military rule for about 50 years, with no existence of democracy in the country.  Suu Kyi is a woman, nobel peace prize winner, and the opposition leader who actually won a seat in the Myanmar Parliamentary today.  She actually had won a seat in 1990, but instead of giving her the seat the government placed her under house arrest and refused her any power or rule, sending a signal to the country.  Suu Kyi bravely continued her fight to bring democracy to the country and break down the barriers existing between Myanmar and the rest of the world.  She began campaigning for this position in 2010 and her victory, despite the suspected rigging of voters and lack of strict system- partly because of the excitement of the country to vote- she had at this point been awarded a seat, with an overwhelming margin of victory.  This is a huge step for this country, providing incredible amounts of hope for the citizens and their future, as well as symbolic for the world, not only was a woman able to achieve this, proving that strength and perseverance are essential to success, and also the hope for democracy in the world today.  I encourage you to read the article, Party: Suu Kyi wins Manmar election to learn more about this country and this brave woman's situation, and if not I hope I was able to tell you about something you  may not have known about :)