87 old man writing books, playing football and organizing summer camps for scout

[zbr5]

Hi guys, I want to share a story with you about man who lives in my town in Poland.

First i met him when I was 9 years old boy - he organized the summer camp for scouts that I participated in. Now, as he came back from Mexico where he worked for few years, I offered him help in organizing camps again in Poland as I heard he is about to organize a few. And indeed we did few camps within last years.

This man has been born in 1925 so he is 87 years old now. He is very fit - he of course take part in this scout camps  and he is active there -talking long, sometimes 6-7 hours long walks, helping in building wooden buildings etc.. He even tried to play football with us this summer but he is rubbish at it so he got discouraged. But he was fit enough to be the goalkeeper.

He is professor of botanics and he managed to finish book that he has been writing for last two years now. This is  book on plant physiology. He is mentally very fit - with memory better than mine. He enjoys telling us very detailed stories about the war.

He is very cheerful person - all kids always love him. For example if they misbehave in the night in their tents and they hear some adult comming, they are relieved to realize it is him, not me. It is amazing but he is more like an older  friend to them. At the same time he accomplishes a lot, even at this age he is involved in all this things + some politics + successful marriage (60+ years together with one woman now). He has organized over 50 camps in his life. The one I took part in when I was young counted ~200 people. So it is rather a not easy thing to do. He speaks polish, english, spanish, ukrainian and german.

As far as his habits are concerned, the interesting thing is that he is not a health freak or something. Things like diets or healthy living do not occupy his mind at all. When I asked him what is his secret, it is what he said:

1) he eats 3 meals a day, and he never eat anything in between the meals. Not even healthy things. (so this could also be the form of my intermittent fasting in my opinion)
2) he does not drink coffee nor tea
3) he eats "as much eggs as he feels like"
4) he eats lots of of fish and as far red meats are concerned  - he does not fry anything. He says wife usually add some meat to the soup he eats and it boils with the soup.
5) he avoids white bread and margarine
6) he exercises every morning for 15 minutes
7) he has not drink alcohol since he has been 21. He says it is important for healthy neurological system

Hmmm..what else? If you want to know anything, you can - I will ask him then!

[goodsamaritan]

He found a nice formula that works for him!
Has he written any books or given any interviews?

[zbr5]

He is not into "health stuff", he just uses some common sense and does not keep occupied with food.
He writes books on botanics only.

[TylerDurden]

OK, zbr5, your post has been edited by the rawpaleoforum language-/thought-policeman, namely myself. It now has correct spelling and general grammar, I'm not so much worried about punctuation and the like. From now on, if I edit a post for correctness re the English language, I will endeavour to name and shame the person responsible in the same thread! I admit that the rawpaleoforum spellcheck(available using the "modify" button on your post) isn't all that great(eg:- it cited "german", "english" and ukrainian" and  "spanish" in that first post as being incorrect), but you could at least make some effort, even if english isn't your first language!

I've already been told off by one of our famed Global Moderators as regards this  seemingly Stalinist stance, but it is important. Making posts with bad English makes us look like illiterate morons. Please make an effort re this!  Make our forum seem like  it's full of erudite professors!

[goodsamaritan]

Tyler, some people like zbr5 are not native english speakers!  So what you want is just not possible to ask of all posters.  You will have to do the necessary editing.

Why don't we just put a disclaimer on the site that we are an international forum and we have international members who are not necessarily that very much fluent in the ways of proper English?  So please give us a little slack.

As much as possible, I'd like to not hurt the feelings of non native english speakers.

Francois is a global moderator and his english is very frenchy.

I write most of the time in English, but I speak tagalog far more often than english.

[TylerDurden]

Tyler, some people like zbr5 are not native english speakers!

Why don't we just put a disclaimer on the site that we are an international forum and we have international members who are not necessarily that very much fluent in the ways of proper English?
 

  To put it bluntly, if we were to all post in Tagalog, the official language of the Phillipines, you would too, be horrified by the endless grammatical mistakes! English is the main language of the world, so we must maintain standards!   We have a  reputation to keep up!  Heck, if I was regularly on paleocru.fr, I  would  still be nitpicking on the issue of french grammar etc., even if I myself wasn't up to scratch.

[goodsamaritan]

He is not into "health stuff", he just uses some common sense and does not keep occupied with food.
He writes books on botanics only.

His habits are health stuff!

- no caffein
- instinctive on the amount of eggs he eats
- avoids the worst form of cooking... frying
- chooses the less harmful cooking method... boiling
- health nut avoids white bread, avoids artificial fats / margarine
- gets great daily moderate exercise
- avoids alcohol
- always outdoors in fresh air in camps, grounded to earth in camping
- is involved with the youth, life has purpose, and meaning.

Sounds like a solid health nut to me !

[goodsamaritan]

  To put it bluntly, if we were to all post in Tagalog, the official language of the Phillipines, you would too, be horrified by the endless grammatical mistakes! English is the main language of the world, so we must maintain standards!   We have a  reputation to keep up!  Heck, if I was regularly on paleocru.fr, I  would  still be nitpicking on the issue of french grammar etc., even if I myself wasn't up to scratch.

You'd better put in the time to make all the corrections as it is unreasonable to ask non native english speakers to write as fluently as you do.
Let's just remind people in such a way not to hurt their feelings.
Already I saw a language conflict with brad and surien because of a simple language misunderstanding.

[svrn]

IS all the food he eats organic or conventional. I could imagine that in some parts of poland only truly organic food is available.

[zbr5]

Yes, it is true GS that he lives very healthy, (almost paleo, even tough he has not heard about it!)  but he does not regard himself as an expert. I guess, one thing is that he is very in touch with his body and he respects its signals. Secondly, he is an old-school man that has not been much affected by modern life. Altough he is good at computers!

And I do think most of his food is organic even though he does not "aim" for it. In our town,  there is a marketplace that gathers small local farmers twice a week. It is not full organic food, but much better one than supermarket food. At least it does smell like veggies and fruits!

By the way, in the past I thought Poland was not good place for Paleo eaters, but now I can see it really is. We have first class, inexpensive wild game meat (venison for 20 EUR for kilogram), we have access to Baltic sea so I have access to fresh (ond-two days) Baltic salmon. We still have great eggs, chicken and markeplaces like the ones I mentioned. We also have a great "meat butique" in Warsaw that imports first class steaks for example from Argentina, France or Japan.  You can also get there meat from 3 month old goats, which I guess  is delicacy (and it is 20 EUR for kilogram!). Just see yourself, it is english version:

http://befsztyk.pl/index.php?language=en&osCsid=9d44d3dd6e40723312a94a997174c060

And TylerDurden, no offence taken with your remark obviously! I was in a hurry in previous post and indeed this post was terrible.  I will do my best to keep the quality of my language, I agree it is important. I hope this one is better. 

[TylerDurden]

Hmm, I may have overreacted. I'll just make a general suggestion to the whole forum every now and then. I would recommend that everyone uses the modify button after posting to see if the spell-check has found a misspelt word and then alters their post. I do this all the time as I often make mistakes due to not paying attention at first.

[Dorothy]

Very interesting Zbr. Thanks for sharing about this person.

He's a botanist so does he drink any teas? I've read that every culture that is long-lived usually will drink a tea that has diuretic properties every day. I'm curious if he does too without realizing it.

[zbr5]

No Dorothy, I think he does not drink any hot beverages including tea and coffee.

The other thing that I forgot to mention in first post is that he spends lots of time outdoors. There were often situations in the past where I called him only to find out that he is "in the fields". His son has strawberry fields and he always likes helping there with labour. And of course the scouting - that includes  walking trips,  tent sleeping, swimming, sun and all of this pleasures!

It was very moving for me to see him with family during last summer camp.. We had a firecamp and he was there with his son. And his son's son. And his son's son's son. In english we would say grand-grand son I suppose?

If he lives another 20 years, this boy that now is 6 , will probably be a man having his own son which would make this man a grand-grand-grand father. He has four or five children by the way.

 

[Dorothy]

When he is out camping and in the fields - does he eat the food that the earth gives him? Weeds, freshly grown things? Does he hunt?

[zbr5]

During the camping he eats the same things that the lady cook prepares for kids, which is basically shitty cooked food.

I do not think he hunts, he rarely eats red meat but he is a fish lover.

[AlphaCog]

No Dorothy, I think he does not drink any hot beverages including tea and coffee.

The other thing that I forgot to mention in first post is that he spends lots of time outdoors. There were often situations in the past where I called him only to find out that he is "in the fields". His son has strawberry fields and he always likes helping there with labour. And of course the scouting - that includes  walking trips,  tent sleeping, swimming, sun and all of this pleasures!

It was very moving for me to see him with family during last summer camp.. We had a firecamp and he was there with his son. And his son's son. And his son's son's son. In english we would say grand-grand son I suppose?

If he lives another 20 years, this boy that now is 6 , will probably be a man having his own son which would make this man a grand-grand-grand father. He has four or five children by the way.

Sound like he lives a stress free life. Do you find him smiling all the time? Have he had any stressful jobs/events in the past?

[zbr5]

Yeah, he does smile most of the time!

And he himself actually mentions a stress free life as one of the factors of his good health condition.

When I was getting married last year he said "I will tell you a very good advice that I was given when I was getting married - "never let the night cover your anger" which means - always make sure to resolve all conflicts with your wife before the night comes. Never go to sleep if conflict is unresolved, because it builds up and make things get worse."

He is happy in his marriage and family life and he likes his professional life (it looks like he could do it for free but he is obviously paid for it). For example, when he worked in university in Mexico, in his "free time" he created a mountain guide and he organized a few summer camps for Mexican kids. When I asked him why he wrote the book , he said that it was important for him to share the knowledge he has in this area , before he dies.

Except the World War II when he lost many close friends - including his dearest brother, he does not seem to have any stressful events in his life.