I have been a newspaper reader for as long as I can remember. Early on, I read the Claremont Daily Eagle and the Boston Record. Later, the Boston Globe and New York Times. In more-recent years, the Ledger-Transcript and Keene Sentinel.

Cable television, various apps and social media are today’s primary sources of information, as well as misinformation and disinformation. It’s hard to avoid them, but when it comes to getting the news, I prefer holding the newspaper in my hands.

I suppose I contradict myself because I like listening to audiobooks as much as reading the printed ones. As the poet Walt Whitman once wrote, “Very well then I contradict myself.”

It’s been ten years since I came back to New Hampshire from Boston, but I still read the Globe. In earlier days, I turned to the sports pages first, then the comic strips and only then the front page.

At some point after reaching 40, I started reading obituaries, and with the passage of time, and more frequently these days, I have been saddened to find names that I recognize, often dear friends. The most-recent, just this year, are the wonderful John T. (“Ike”) Williams, lawyer, literary agent, Renaissance Man; and Paul Sugarman, lawyer, educator and role model.

I did not know Dominic “Paul” DiMaggio, who died last month. According to the Globe, after graduating from college “he joined his father in the family business, Delaware Valley Corporation.”

That surprised me. Until now, I always thought the DiMaggio family business was baseball. One uncle, Vince, played for several major league teams, including the Boston Braves. His more famous uncle, “Joltin’ Joe,” played for the New York Yankees. His father, Dominic, known as ‘the Little Professor” because he wore eyeglasses, played center field for the Boston Red Sox.

When other kids were asking “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?” my baseball pals and I were singing a different question, “Who’s better than his brother Joe? Dominic DiMaggio.”

The recent Globe obituary identifies DiMaggio’s late parents, Emily and Dominic, but does not mention that his father was the third of the outfield-roaming DiMaggio brothers. I met that Dom DiMaggio, and his wife Emily, twice.

The first time was in 1954, the year after he retired from the Red Sox, at a luncheon in Boston following my cousin’s bar mitzvah. I could hardly believe it when my parents, sister and I were seated at the same table as them.

I didn’t ask him about playing in the outfield with Ted Williams, or anything about baseball for that matter. Brother Joe and Marilyn Monroe were newlyweds, and all I wanted to know was whether they had met her. Emily DiMaggio told me, “We will next week, in New York.”

The second time was about 50 years later at a charitable event in Boston. I went over to “reintroduce” myself and remind them of our previous meeting. Emily DiMaggio said she remembered being at the bar mitzvah. Dom seemed puzzled but then looked me in the eye and said, “Joe, you haven’t changed a bit.”

I never met Joe DiMaggio, though I did see him play in Fenway Park. In the late 1960s, Paul Simon wrote a song for the movie “The Graduate,” called “Mrs. Robinson.” It includes the lyrical question, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”

Simon (and his partner Art Garfunkel) sang the answer. “What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson? Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away. Hey, hey, hey.”

Joseph D. Steinfield lives in Keene and Jaffrey. He can be reached at joe@joesteinfield.com.