I finished this book a few months ago after a priest recommended it to me. Francis: The Journey and the Dream by Murray Bodo is a loose biography of St. Francis that is written in an almost poetic style. The style becomes a stumbling block at times but overall it is an excellent little book.

Francis is a saint that everyone seems to love. We all think of Saint Francis preaching to the birds and enjoying God's creation. This book goes further and doesn't pull the punches to show how fully Francis lived the virtues of detachment, simplicity, and service. Francis loved so much that he gave it all, just like his model, Christ, gave everything. While that was beautiful, it was not easy.

Perhaps we aren't all called to the level of holiness and charity that Saint Francis was. Even so, this book helps one appreciate the reality of detachment and service to which all Christians are called.

An excellent read.

As I said a few days ago, I've been out geocaching quite a bit in my spare time this summer. I've also been playing with my old (and wearing out) Garmin eTrex Legend hand held GPS. It was fancy in its day, but now it lacks some features such as turn-by-turn directions, a color display, a microsd memory card slot, and a magnetic compass that the new models have. To keep the buttons working on my trusty eTrex, I occasionally have to bang the unit against a rock, tree, or whatever is handy. And the screen sometimes flips out with alternate lines in the LCD display blanking out. Again, a light tap seems to fix the problem. I think to myself, it might be time to go shopping.

Aside from drooling over the new GPS receiver models from Garmin, I have been playing around with free mapping software like Google Earth and Google Maps. And I've found quite a few new ways to make use of my Garmin eTrex's computer interface cable to transfer information back and forth.

First, I noticed that geocaching.com allows you to download bookmark lists of cache locations into a gpx file. And using the program EasyGPS I can download these cache locations directly into my eTrex via the serial cable, saving typing. I thought that was pretty cool.

Next, I realized that EasyGPS had downloaded my "tracks" and "waypoints" from the eTrex and let me save them as a GPX file on my hard disk. This makes me very happy because I know that Google Earth can open a GPX file. Every place I marked with my GPS over the years was now posted on Google Earth maps. In addition, everywhere I walked or drove recently while the GPS was powered on was marked with a white trail on the map in Google Earth, like the picture above from last weekend's "tour de cache II." These are the "tracks" that the GPS automatically records whenever it is turned on.

That was all fun, but the most interesting trick I found had to deal with automatically putting pictures on a map. I went out and hunted for caches last weekend. I left my GPS running, plugged into the electrical outlet in my pickup, as I drove across the countryside and hiked through the brush. I occasionally stopped to take pictures. I hunted for the caches, and took more pictures. I had no idea that it would be so easy to combine my digital images with GPS data.

Today I saw an article about some software called PhotoMapper that would take the timestamp recorded by my digital camera in the image, combine that with the track log recorded by my GPS, and figure out the latitude and longitude at which the picture was taken. It then encoded that latitude and longitude into the digital image file in a standardized way.

So why is that interesting? Google's Picasa and some other similar sites can read that information and will stick the photos on a map. If you click on the image above or right here you can see how Picasa Web placed my photos on the map, almost exactly where I took them. Just click the "view map" button. Click on a thumbnail and then click "play" in the popup bubble for a slideshow on the map. The clock in my camera must be a few minutes off of the GPS time, but it's close because the locations are not far off on the map. In most cases just a few hundred feet. Next time I'll check the time on my camera.

I'm amazed how easy this was and that it's all done with free software. Even a low-end Garmin hand held GPS and digital camera can do this stuff.

For more details, I recommend checking out these sites:

• http://freegeographytools.com/
• http://www.easygps.com/
• http://picasaweb.google.com/
• http://earth.google.com/

This is my favorite time of year on the Northern Plains. The rain and storms usually calm down about now, the grass is still green, and the fields are beginning to turn gold as we head toward harvest. Farmers are out cutting hay in the ditches, filling the air with a delightful smell. Sure, it gets up to a hundred degrees in July and August in North Dakota. But the big, clear blue skies and the open space make up for it all.

Yesterday a fellow geocacher, Bob, and I went on our second North Dakota geocaching road trip, a "tour de cache," as he likes to call it. We spent half of our Saturday cruising the dirt trails, gravel backroads, and highways west of Garrison. People don't understand what geocaching is. When I explain it, they sometimes think it doesn't make sense to drive all over looking for boxes hidden in the grass. Why would anyone want to dig around in brush, pick off ticks, and swat mosquitoes just to find useless trinkets? Well, it isn't the trinkets that make geocaching fun. It's a reason to get out and enjoy the place I live. Here are a few snapshots from the two "tours de cache."

Happy Independence Day! Here are a few snapshots from the festivities in Mandan.

Fr. Phillips and I walked downtown to watch some of the parade.



At "Art in the Park," our Knights of Columbus council has a burger stand every year.



Fr. Phillips helped out by cooking up some dogs.



While I flipped some burgers.



Here is a snapshot of some of the volunteers.

I know firsthand how hard the Knights of Columbus work for the good of the community and for the support of religious vocations. I helped out for a couple of hours, but these guys and their wives do this all the time. It means a lot to us seminarians.

After Fr. Phillips and I were done with our shift at the food stand we browsed the art and craft stands in the park. I introduced Father to "Dippin' Dots," chatted with some of the people in the park, and enjoyed the beautiful weather. For supper some parishioners and employees of the parish gathered at a home in Mandan for supper. It was an enjoyable evening.

The fireworks tonight were absolutely amazing. The view from the church parking lot was unlike anything I've ever seen. Fireworks were banned in Bismarck and Mandan last year, so people more than made up for it this year.

God Bless America!

Today during my prayer I read this meditation by Fr. Lacordaire, a Dominican preacher from 1860s France. The excerpt was published in this month's copy of Magnificat. I found it to be an excellent, concise description of what it means to be Christian: to seek God's will and serve others, no matter where that task leads you.

For the man of the world, life is but a space to be got over as slowly as possible, by the pleasantest road; but the Christian does not regard it in such a light. He knows that every man is the vicar of Jesus Christ, to labor by the sacrifice of himself for the redemption of humanity; and that in the plan of his great work each has a place, marked out eternally, which he is free to accept or refuse. He knows that if he voluntarily deserts this place which Providence offers to him in the ranks of useful beings, it will be transferred to a better than he, and that he himself will be abandoned to his own guidance in the wide and short way of egotism. These thoughts occupy the Christian to whom his predestination is not yet revealed; and, convinced that the surest way to ascertain it is to desire to accomplish it, whatever it may be, he keeps himself ever ready to accept the appointments of God's will. He despises none of the functions necessary for the Christian republic, because in all may be found three things on which depends their real value -- the will of God which imposes them, the good which results from their faithful exercise, and the devotedness of heard to which they are confided. He even believes firmly that the less honored are not the less high, and that the crown of the saints never comes more directly from heaven than upon a poor man's head, grown gray in the accepted humiliation of a laborious calling. Little does it matter to him, then, where God may appoint his place; it suffices for him to know that it his his will.

The themes of self-sacrifice and love present in this short meditation are found everywhere in any true vocation. It seems to me that this should ring true to any good Christian mother or father; and I know it rings true for a man discerning God's will in the seminary.