David William Sheehan writes: I learned to read power from a puppet throwing toast. Authority is safest to needle, and funniest, from underneath a couch cushion. In 1729 A Modest Proposal recommended that the children of the Irish poor be fattened and sold for food. I do not think The Den knew it was doing any of this, and that is the part I keep returning to. I run schools now, which is to say I have become one of the institutions The Den taught me to distrust.