Photo by contributor Roshni Ravi, a 24-year-old mental health professional based in Bangalore, India. She is interested in the exploration of existential ideas of hope, happiness, meaning, presence and being in therapeutic practice. Roshni also lives with a diagnosis of clinical depression. She finds negotiating her roles as both a mental health service provider and user an empowering and challenging experience. Her photographic work reflects her idiosyncratic attraction towards birds, the rain and bright colours. When she is not obsessing about life’s eternal quest for meaning, she enjoys baking, dancing and watching wildlife.

About this photo: “I was sitting atop an elephant when I took this photo, on a cold winter afternoon in Kaziranga, Assam. It was the last photograph I took that day. I return to it often, thinking how perfectly real it is, the lone soldier, heaven, earth and everything in between, everything revealed and ultimately alone.”

The National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) has announced a Patrol Supervisor Response to Critical Incidents Seminar to be held during the 31^st Annual Tactical Operations Conference & Trade Show,  Sept. 21^st – 26^th, 2014 at the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile Convention Center in Mobile, Alabama.

Sgt. Fred Farris

This 16-hour seminar, taught by Sgt. Fred Farris of the Lenexa (KS) Police Department, is designed to provide patrol supervisors with the information and tools needed to manage a critical incident prior to the arrival of SWAT. Legal issues, scene management and small team tactics can give the patrol supervisor tools needed to manage a critical incident scene, as well as respond to unfolding events prior to the arrival of SWAT.

Registration for the 2014 Conference and Trade Show is open to all active law enforcement officers. Active members of a state tactical association receive a $50 discount…

By Michael Snyder

The basic necessities in life just keep getting more expensive.  On Tuesday, Hershey announced that the price of all of their chocolate bars is going to go up by about 8 percent.  That is particularly distressing to me, because I am known to love chocolate.  But if it was just chocolate that was becoming significantly more expensive perhaps that would be okay.  Last month, it was coffee.  J.M. Smucker, one of the largest coffee producers in the United States, announced that it planned to raise coffee prices by about 9 percent.  And Starbucks has announced a bunch of price increases across the board on their coffee products.  Of course we could all survive without chocolate and coffee, but as you will see below just about every food category is becoming more expensive.  If this keeps up, could we eventually see armed guards in grocery stores…

For National Poetry Month in April, Orion Magazine hosted a poetry exchange inspired by a collaboration between poets Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Ross Gay. The theme was “This Growing Season.” Orion put out a call for anyone who was interested and then matched people up randomly.

I was paired with Anastasia Andersen, who teaches poetry at the University of New Mexico (her full bio is below). Here is how she described the challenge we set forth for our poetry exchange:

We chose a writing game based on those of the French Surrealists. We agreed upon number of stanzas (6) and lines per stanza (5).  We also alternated writing stanzas, but only forwarded the final line, which would inform the next stanza. The “missing” lines of the stanzas were revealed after all 6 stanzas had been written.  We also chose a line from a poem by Robert Desnos as a title “I Circle Around but…

21 March 2014 – I’m halfway through the GSMNP. The weather has been perfect for hiking thus far – sunny, clear, and temperatures in the 50’s. I climbed Clingmans Dome today. This is the highest point on the A.T. at 6300′ elevation. It’s all downhill from here! I’ve also crossed into Tennessee, the third state on the trail heading northbound (NoBo). Rocky Top was the first major climb in this State. I will cross back and forth between North Carolina and Tennessee until I reach Virginia in a couple of weeks.

By P. Henry

Yes, I am going there. One of the most hotly debated questions in prepper/survival/firearm enthusiast circles is around the best survival rifle. For all intents and purposes, there are only two in competition in the US and those are the AK-47 and the AR-15. I will add that there are variants of both and I am lumping all of those into these two categories. This question of what is the best survival rifle is one that I asked myself when I was considering my first rifle purchase so I wanted to take some time on the Prepper Journal blog today to hash out what I see are the differences and to give you my opinion as to which rifle is better when it comes to the AK-47 vs AR-15.

I know that this subject is insanely controversial, even though it shouldn’t be. It’s the same as getting upset…