From his earliest years, Michael Donaroma could not help but be
aware of the bipolar, us and them, have and have not division of
Martha's Vineyard society.

"My father left when I was two," the Edgartown
businessman and selectman recalled this week, on the eve of the 30th
anniversary of the nursery business which has carried him across to the
have side of that social divide.

The back of the T-shirt read: “Burn Crew 2007. Burning landscapes near you.” Under those words was the equivalent of a band’s performance schedule, a dozen locales across six states.

And even though the wearer of the shirt and eight other members of her group were sitting around in a circle in a weedy clearing in the woods in firefighting gear on Wednesday, it was very like the atmosphere at the sound check before a music gig.