Here's our local columnist -- Mike Nichols, writing for the St. Paul Pioneer Press -- with a closer take (yep, even here in the middle of the country) on the end of Osama bin Laden, and what it means for/to? the country as a Whole.

The thing is, Matthew Hermanson — and I think this is what Gordy ultimately was saying when he talked about being humbled — didn't act like a stranger. And he certainly didn't treat any of the rest of us like one.

His family, in a statement issued after his death, eloquently pointed that out.

"Matthew loved serving his country and had great loyalty for his fellow servicemen," they said. "It's written, 'There is no greater love than to lay your life down for a friend.' Not only did Matthew, and his fellow servicemen, lay down their lives for a friend, they laid down their lives for countrymen and women they did not know."

Sure, Andrea Haberman — who died on the 92nd floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center nearly 10 years ago now — was one of them. So are her dad, her mom and the man she was going to marry and never got the chance to. But so, to the same extent, are all the rest of us who didn't suffer as personal a loss but benefit every bit as much from, as Gordy calls it, the fight.

I wanted to talk to him about justice and relief and how people start to move forward in the world after being targeted by terrorists. Gordy wanted to talk about the soldiers — which, it took me awhile to understand, was the same thing.

Mike Nichols can be reached at MRNichols@wi.rr.com.

Good stuff.

(click that link!~)