Cheers to the first fish who ever felt wetenough to stick his head out of the water.Thanks be to him, the fishy father hereimmortalized in museum display. I pushthis button and let light fill the enclosure,illuminating a tangle of ferns and volcanic rockas this trailblazing fish takes the first stepson stalwart legs. His cliff-faced progenyharnesses fire in a cave down the hall—I pusha button and the room fills with the soundsof crackling logs, the thudding music of bone mallets.Now look here! What’s this? Another display,more glass partitioning me from Mesopotamians.They drop boulders on raiders—in every roomthere seems to be a fence, and in every roomthere is a person climbing it. I approachthe New World wing: pioneers wavefrom a passing barge. And on the right, the piledcorpses of Antietam. Each switch I flickis like an apocalypse for another time.The exhibit leaps forward to the brave aviatorstaking aim for the stars—no mention of gas masks,or trenches of the Somme, no amphibious landingat Normandy. No mushroom clouds scaling the desert sky.I follow the hall back to the atrium and think ofthe spectators in 1964 who, upon emergingfrom the red domed Travelers Insurance Pavilion,found themselves once again in Queens.