Old Carpets Defeat Giant Shark!

Although I thought my son Alex would say that the best thing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art was The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (a giant shark floating in formaldehyde-- some kind of weird installation art) he actually chose "those carpets" as his favorite exhibit, which made me very happy, since that's what I was there to see: these baroque tapestries, which are leaving in a few days, contain images of sea monsters, mythical creatures, battling knights on horseback, lions being stabbed, and depictions of Jesus, Mary, and Neptune, all rendered in precise detail on twenty foot high, hand-weaved masterpieces (one took seven years to make).