Growing up in Philadelphia I loved to see the mural on the back side of a building on Vine Street near the main Free Library building. It depicts a sitting girl engrossed in a book wide open in front of her. Behind her is a brightly colored world of fantastic creatures and unfurling plants lit by a beam of sunlight. The mural, sponsored by the Philadelphia Reads program, is called “Secret Book,” apparently a reference to a line from Shakespeare’s King Henry IV, “And now I will unclasp a secret book.”

Reading, perhaps a dying art in the world of video, has been for me a way to travel to places I will never go and enter the minds of people I will never know. Nothing has added so much richness to my life as reading. For me, reading begins with a sense of wonder and ends with a feeling of awe.

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Joe Dworetzky is a second career journalist. He practiced law in Philadelphia for more than 35 years, representing private and governmental clients in commercial litigation and insolvency proceedings. Joe served as City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia under Mayor Ed Rendell and from 2009 to 2013 was one of five members of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission with responsibility for managing the city’s 250 public schools. He moved to San Francisco in 2011 and began writing fiction and pursuing a lifelong interest in editorial cartooning. Joe earned a Master’s in Journalism from Stanford University in 2020. He covers Legal Affairs and writes long form Investigative stories. His occasional cartooning can be seen in Bay Area Sketchbook. Joe encourages readers to email him story ideas and leads at joe.dworetzky@baycitynews.com.