I live in a collection of communities on part of an island in Puget Sound. The area is referred to as “the South End of the Island,” a distinct semi-rural area that excels in bypassing the corporate culture.

In its early days, the few settlers were mostly farmers and loggers. Their connections with the mainland (“over town”) were limited, since travel between the two places was (and is) only by ferry. In the post World War II era, hippies and other malcontents discovered the South End and encouraged its eccentric bent.

Some of the hippies left. Others became responsible citizens, but the culture of nonconformity endures. Recently, a group discovered that, by banding together, they could loan money to small businesses sometimes bypassed by normal lending channels.

New small businesses include a variety of enterprises: a bakery, a pub, a shop selling local foods and goods to the tourists who flock here in the summer, and a small Latin American restaurant. One of the more recent requests is from a businesswoman with expertise in the travel industry who sees the South End as a perfect place to conduct bicycle tours.

The South End experiment is only one example of how ordinary Americans are trying new ways of doing things that don’t depend on huge amounts of money or mass consumerism.