David Morrill

By David Morrill Diego Plasencia’s American dream had crashed and burned long before he sat down on a New York sidewalk with his guitar on a summer morning in 1998. He admits that he wasn’t much of a guitar player, and less of a singer, but he was desperate for money he needed to return...

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series about the collapse of Cuenca financial cooperative Coopera, and the aftermath. By David Morrill Coopera’s troubles went public on June 6, when police arrested chief financial officer Aldo Santiago Calle and auditor Raúl Efraín Carpio. Five days later, on June 11, general manager Rodrigo Aucay...

Editor’ note: This the first of a two-part series about the collapse of Cuenca financial cooperative Coopera, and its aftermath. By David Morrill In June, when the Cuenca-based cooperative Coopera was shut by federal officials, it was one of Ecuador’s largest financial institution failures since the country’s banking melt-down of 1999 and 2000. The closure...

By David Morrill Where most woodworkers see problems, Ed Konderla sees possibilities. “The wood I use would be thrown on the burn pile by most carpenters. It’s unstable and gnarly, and it wouldn’t work for furniture or general carpentry,” he says. “It’s kind of a paradox. For my projects, I look for strange graininess, knotholes,...