It was hot on the August day in 2016 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel presented the Obama Foundation with nearly 20 acres of Jackson Park as the site for the Obama Presidential Center.
On the concrete terrace on the south side of the Museum of Science and Industry, where journalists and officials gathered for the announcement, it was blistering too hot to process much beyond the need to find some shade.
Emanuel might have handed over a 99-year, $10 lease for
50 acres without getting a rise out of that sweltering captive audience.
If any of them were thinking about the battle over a similar gift to George Lucas, resolved barely two months earlier, when he gave up and took his museum to California, I didn t hear them mention it.