In this exuberant record of Barbara Mossberg engaging audiences from California to Finland, you will find poems, stories, memoir, humor, elegies, celebrations, travel narratives, rollicking speeches, nature rapture, literary tributes, cooking instructions, and love songs, among other riches. You will encounter mountains and mountain lions, rivers and herons, lost loved ones and found miracles. In her company, you will experience, as she does, moments “when the Universe will reveal itself … as something generous and good, some whiff of passing grace.” The aroma of wonder rises from every page. —Scott R. Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination The Poet Laureate of Pacific Grove California shares her always optimistic life wisdom in series of short wonderful essays and poems. Mossberg's love of nature, John Muir, Emily Dickinson, and life itself comes through loud and clear! - Angelino I was and will always be a student of Dr. Mossberg. And as I read, "Here for the Present," laying on the sand at Sunset Beach in Southern California, I was transported to Pacific Grove and the sights and smells of this community as well as to Helsinki where I felt the sting of being hit on the head by a sign. To read "Here for the Present," is to experience beauty, tragedy and expansiveness. -Gilbert Salazar Such a pleasure to spend time reading the poetry and prose of the insightful epiphanies of Barbara Mossberg. I loved this book -- and I have already ordered five more copies to introduce my friends and colleagues to Mossberg! -Friday's Child You can feel almost painfully bewildered by this kind of goodness, this "happiness in the present imperfect" which is going to end soon, no doubt about it. I like how these poems sit with the ambiguity of that, often in early-morning grayness. (A line from one that has been sitting with me for days, sure and full of mystery: "Something wants me alive.") If you like Mary Oliver, if you believe that the world is calling to us like wild geese, "over and over announcing your place in the family of things" -- you are going to love Mossberg's poems on swimming naked in Finland, on bears and mountain lions, on hunger/desire/the miracle of the unthinking self. If you like Robin Wall Kimmerer, if you sometimes/often (like her students) find it difficult to believe that Earth loves us back -- you are going to love Mossberg's writing on how "what we care for nourishes us"; how "what we show love to loves us back." -Leo Scolopax Totally enjoyed the poems, recipes and short essays - a potpourri of life! Her optimistic spirit shines through and warms the soul. Wonderful and full of wonder. -Nancy Professor Barbara Mossberg's global career spans four decades as a prizewinning poet, author, and teacher, and educational ministry to promote the transformational power of poetry in people's lives. President Emerita Goddard College, founding Dean California State University Monterey Bay, Professor of Practice of Clark Honors College, University of Oregon, and American Council on Education Senior Fellow, and other roles, her cultural leadership has been internationally recognized in Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award twice, federal appointment as U.S. Scholar in Residence for USIA, representing American letters worldwide, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Mellon Foundation (Aspen Institute).