RARELY IS THERE A DAY when the news doesn’t reveal a new study that finds men in their advanced years are increasingly socially isolated. Isolation, we are told, has serious health consequences; loneliness is a plague that causes or contributes to depression, addiction, dementia and suicide.

And while the antidote — more friends — would seem to be obvious, we are also confronted by the trope that men can’t make friends when they are older. Friends come from youth and the middle years when parents are jumbled together by their children. As the years advance, the goal is to hang onto the friends you have, because new ones are few and far between. You can’t make new old friends.

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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.