This is one of the few times you’ll ever see me post a link to an AJC article. I generally don’t do this due to the short lifespan of articles on their website. But while it’s still available, for any of you wondering why anybody finds Atlanta worth loving, this is one man’s perspective:

Loving Atlanta is complicated. While wonderful in countless ways, it is also exasperating and disappointing. It has grown so much that it has nearly paved over its identity. Is it American Nirvana or mere landscaped parking lot?

And which Atlanta to love? The energetic, easy and egalitarian sprawl of the suburbs or the intimate, green yet sometimes slovenly central city? I came of age in Atlanta’s suburbs but found love in the city.

Many positive points

I love that it is just Southern enough to take the edge off its mercantile and trashy true personality. I love that you can catch a trout in a river that runs through it (eating it is a somewhat different matter). I love that it represents tolerance to an awful lot of people who come from places that didn’t want them.

I love that people here can see things so differently — a culture that supports both Newt Gingrich and John Lewis. OK, I’ll get sappy, I love that it produced the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a man who means so much around the world. I like that it gave birth to both Coca-Cola and the civil rights movement.

I’ve lived here on and off 34 years, yet I still feel rapture when I see the Midtown skyline reflected on the lake in Piedmont Park — as long as I am not close enough to the lake to smell it.