Images

By Claire Helen Siegal

Claire Helen Siegal believed that the greatest evil in life was not to fulfill ones potential. Through the written word, a sensitive, intelligent, and acerbic voice emerges. In this autobiographypublished posthumously by her executrix, Elaine LevittClaires poetry, essays, and narrative text paint a portrait of its creator. Before she died, Claire began her quest for self-understanding through her writing.
From her writings, a flesh-and-blood woman emerges. She blends her variegated images to produce a self-portrait that paints her as she was in life: a vulnerable, willful, innocent, cynical, and always unforgettable woman. An idealist, Claire yearned for the ideal, but faced realitys hard, metallic edge with determination. Hers was a biting-edge, sardonic wisdom, learned at the expense of innocence.
Claire gave herself the moral mandate to put together this unconventional autobiography forcing you to see her importance, so her soul could have peace. She didnt want sympathy or compassion; she wanted affirmation of the life she lived, as if this could make it meaningful.
Her life was a study in contrast; innocent and cynical by turns. Her persona is recognizable in all her writings. She was alone. G-d was not in her life. She was Jewish and proud of it, but she removed G-d from the equation on the basis of what the Holocaust did to her family. She questioned everything, letting nothing escape her notice.
You will not soon forget her, or the images her life evokes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abbott Press
• Release date: Aug 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781458204714

Claire Helen Siegal

Claire Helen Siegal was many things: teacher of early childhood education, social worker, therapist, guidance counselor, nationalist, Universalist, and Mensa member. She loved animals, nature, traveling, good food, and culture. She never married. She died of cancer at the age of seventy-nine.

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Images

Claire Helen Siegal

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Images

Copyright © 2012 by Claire Helen Siegal.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-4582-0470-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4582-0471-4 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4582-0472-1 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012911500

Abbott Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

Abbott Press

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.abbottpress.com

Phone: [phone]

Images by Claire Helen Siegal

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Abbott Press rev. date: 07/03/13

Contents

On Me

The Day Of Reckoning

Stop The World, I Want To Get Off!

Call Me By My Rightful Name

I would never run out of Holidays

Most Doctors Make Me Sick

She died of Too much Doctor

My Doctor Screwed Me.

Before and After 9/11/01

To Belong You Must Conform

People in My Mind’s Eye

Mostly artists, poets, writers, entertainers

And G-d Created Gilda’s Club

Some of Us Have Greatness Thrust Upon Us

Our Country is Good

You Don’t Have to Be

Why is Snow So Cold?*

Relationships

Noah’s Ark

The Country of My Heritage

Please gas me*

Red Camelia is my Favorite Horse

My Love Affair with the Janitor

You’re The Only One

Spelling- Bees Should be Written

Jay or Ira, What’s in a Name? or Claire for Clairvoyant

Jaime Pronounced Jay-me

The Boy with Polka-Dots

To Do The Right Thing

Michael was on TV

A Cat Named Claire

Some of us are Acting

My Brief Life as a Stage Director

My Life as a Teacher/

Guidance-Counselor

There’s Nothing Worse Than an Educated Fool

You Don’t have to go to Hollywood to put your foot in Cement.

What is Love to Me?

Two Dreams that Failed #1

Two Dreams that Failed

Strengthen the U.N. and Save the World

Brighton Beach Blues

Overanalyzed

Realism Sets In

Hang The Flag

(Written prior to the WTC Event)

This Plastic World

A Hard Choice

Limerics

Confession

Metamorphosis

And Then Man Created God

Some Rabbis Have A Lot to Learn

Never Run out of Holidays

What Does a Great Person Mean to You?

On Death Row

The Person on Death -Row has all The Answers

The Price of Genius

Poems

More Poems

What Is A Poet?

‘Love"

The Beginning Of A New Day

Together

Poems written for me

Song

Prometheus Unsound

Once In Awhile We Feel Like Crying

Poems That Influenced Me

Untitled

More Poems that Influenced me

Goals For Me

Untitled

Comes the Dawn

A Psalm for life

Family

A Porque Esta’ Acqui?

Post-Script to Mom and Dad

Forbidden Words

How Mom and Dad Met. Where they and their families came from.

Mom and Pop

For Harold’s 50th Birthday *

For Brother Jack

Momma won a beauty contest In Zborov, Poland

Travel

Sometimes It pays to know Only English

My Overnight Trip

Thank G-D, I’m Not A Woman

How Much Do You Want?

Is a Rowboat, Seaworthy?

A Little Bit of Tibet In Staten Island

On Politics

A Letter to Mr. Gorbachev

Letter to the President

On Separation of Church & State

More on Separation of Church and State

Hang The Flag (written prior to the WTC Event)

Dedicated to an Acting President*

On Condo Living

To Save You Money"

The Enlightenment

‘Mother’s Day’ or ‘Women’s Day’

Terrorists or Freedom Fighters

You can’t have your Cake And Eat It Too.

Stream of Consciousness

To Whom It May Concern

Do you have to be an Idiot to be an Ambassador?

The Russians Saved the Neighborhood

An Open Letter to Ousted Paraguayan Dictator General Alfred Stoessner

Letter to The Voice

Who will ask the Question?

There Are No Answers, Only Questions

Dirty Politics Invades Education

On Me

The Day Of Reckoning

On April 19th, I nearly drowned in Miami Beach, Florida. One moment I had my feet on the ground. Then I went in for a swim and the next moment, I was swept away. I called for help. Luckily I saw a man’s head, but he swam away from me towards the shore. I became more frightened, and screamed. After what seemed like an enormously long time, a lifeguard threw a rope towards me, and fought the tide to pull me in. It was not easy, but I knew he would make it. I thanked him profusely, and asked him what had happened to me. He suggested that I swim on the other side of the rope in the future, because there was a hole on one side. I asked him why they didn’t put up a sign, warning people not to swim on the bad side. He said that that was a good idea! Then he boasted that he had saved four people because of this hole the day before.

Now, I am convinced that lifeguards are there to save people, not to prevent accidents from happening. Unfortunately, he had not heard my call for help. I made a mental note that I needed to buy a whistle.

I never met the man who swam to shore to tell the lifeguard to save me. He was the man who was really responsible for my survival!

Since that event, I have had three dreadfully painful life-threatening experiences. (Three strikes and I’m almost out.) My conclusion is that it is easier to die than to live!

–––—               ––––               ––––

Stop The World, I Want To Get Off!

I was on the phone one day with an old friend and she used the term, Jew them down. I had not heard this expression since I was a young woman hitch-hiking out west in California. I said, Did you say Chew them down. No, I said Jew them down. She responded. I told her that this expression was offensive to me and asked her never to use it again. She told me that I was too ‘sensitive’ and that no one was going to tell her what she could or could not say and then she hung up!

I will never know my grandmother and twenty-four other

relatives, including children, murdered by the Nazis.

However, I know exactly what happened to them.

The Poles helped the Nazis find where the Jewish people lived. They knocked on their doors, ushered them out, made them dig their own graves, stripped them and then shot them like dogs. Then they buried them the following morning.

One of my cousins found that she was not shot, a miracle!

She waited until nightfall and crawled out of her grave to the

house of a Christian Family, who hid her until the war was over.

My father paid for her flight to Montevideo, Uruguay where she

was reunited with her fiance’ and married him. We had hoped that our family had fled to Russia. She had taken away that hope. Now, when I travel, I search for