Question: Where else will you see multiple internationally recognized instructors teaching a range of weapon and empty hand techniques in a day long seminar held at a historic mansion, all for free?

Answer: Nowhere else. This is without a doubt the best martial arts value you will see this year.

I gave a review of last year’s event, or at least those parts I attended, and hopefully this year I can get out there for the full day. This year should be similar in format to last year.

The tentative schedule begins at 10 am with a tour of the mansion and a discussion of the manly pursuits of its former occupants. The first half of the martial instruction is dedicated to military weapons (lower, then upper class) and the latter half is civilian self-defense including empty hand, sticks, and knives (bartitsu too!) again divided by class.

Rather than give the full pitch, I’ll direct you to the website so you can get all the details for contacts, directions, etc. Hope to see you there!

Go check it out at Mokuren Dojo where Pat was kind enough to host it this month. He did a special theme issue on “Warriors of Peace and Justice” and received a nice response.

There are many quality posts, but here are a few that caught my eye:

Patrick Parker included an older Nonviolent self defense that matched this month’s theme. I love the photo he links to, check it out!

Chris also hopped into the wayback machine to post his thoughts on Conflict Resolution: A Casualty of Non-Violent Martial Arts. Pretty amusing in that he immediately takes a shot at any art that doesn’t free spar as being “inadvertently harmless.” I found myself nodding my head in agreement at first, but then I began to think of exceptions, such as some forms of silat, combatives, etc.

Dave Shevitz posted on Jury Duty and Ki Tests, which I thought was an interesting look into the deliberation room through an aiki filter.

I found some common ground with Eric Frey this time after reading his How to Spot a Punch Coming a Mile Away post. I once had an excellent boxe-francaise instructor that I finally had to agree to disagree with because I simply refused to focus on my opponent eyes when kickboxing.

The next Carnival (#6) will be hosted by Black Belt Mama so be sure and get your submittal in by February 23. Submit your post here.

I will link to it here when it is posted, but we are looking at a December 15 submission deadline and a December 17 carnival posting date. Don’t forget, readers can nominate posts they’ve read and enjoyed as well; you don’t have to be a blogger to participate!

I think this is a great step forward for the carnival and I hope other bloggers will also consider guest-hosting. It’s a win-win situation for all our participating bloggers and their readers because it allows readers to take a quick look at the best posts of the month in the martial blogosphere.

Remember, though, if you submit a post, you need to link to the carnival when it is posted because that’s the only way this thing really works. So go ahead and

Submit posts to the next edition of the Carnival of Martial Arts.

You can also check out past editions of the Carnival of Martial Arts via the submission link above or by clicking on the “Carnival of Martial Arts” tag below.

Please note that the downloads are optimized for printing, rather than reading online, but it should still be a good experience. I don’t know offhand how some of the current ebook readers will handle the more graphics-intensive downloads, but if it’s a problem, print it out on a good printer and you’ll have a nice read.

I had originally hoped that the sale of reprints would subsidize the purchase of future rare books to reprint in turn, but the time and cost of making a reprint compared to the miniscule return is simply not worth it.

Therefore, I cut the paperback reprints prices and enabled free downloads in order to better disseminate this information, which was the goal to begin with.

Click here or on the reprints tab at the top of the page to see all available titles.

Lundin arrived in the U.S. in 1893 and was touring as a strongman by 1894. For decades following, he toured the U.S. and other countries as an exceptional wrestler. Lundin documents his associations with the most famous wrestlers of his time, such as Farmer Burns, Frank Gotch, Mitsuyo Maeda (Konde Koma), Ed “Strangler” Lewis, Tom Jenkins, George Hackenschmidt, Jim Londos, and many others.

Lundin describes the differences between the “shooting” matches and the “works” that came later. He tells who could wrestle and who couldn’t, and discusses everyone from Olympians to those who made their living purely as entertainers in the rasslin’ ring.

Included is Lundin’s account of his defeat of Mitsuyo Maeda, the man responsible for Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Unfortunately, the cover photo renders poorly on the sale site, but it actually looks fine, more like is seen here.