Patience is wearing thin for the estimated 895,000 homes and businesses in New England that still don't have power in the wake of Hurricane Irene. The Associated Press reports:

Cold showers. The stench of spoiled food. No Internet. No TV. Too few distractions. Patience is wearing thin among the hundreds of thousands of people--down from a peak of 9.6 million--still waiting for the electricity to come back on after last weekend's storm.

"It's like 'Little House on the Prairie' times," said Debbie McWeeney, who went to a Red Cross shelter in Warwick to pick up food and water after everything in her refrigerator went bad. "Except I'm not enjoying it at all."

Power companies say they're working overtime to get the grid back online, but residents remain disgruntled and increasingly fearful of looting. 

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Adam Clark Estes