By MARK ROTH, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

New Year's Day fell on a Sunday this year.

And if Richard Henry and Steve Hanke had their way, it would fall on Sunday next year, and the year after that, instead of the sequence we'll face under the 430-year-old Gregorian calendar.

Katherine Porter and Susan Wachter work on opposite sides of the nation, but they share common ground on one issue.

For a country that fell into a recession primarily because of a collapse in the housing market, the two experts say, America has done a lousy job of coming up with a plan to revitalize home ownership.

National statistics show how persistent the slump is.

LAS VEGAS - If you want to know why this city was the epicenter of America's housing boom and bust, visit the Mountain's Edge community at the southern end of Clark County.

Plunked down in the middle of the desert, the hundreds of Spanish-style homes sprang up at an astonishing pace from 2004 to 2006, selling at constantly escalating prices ranging from $400,000 to $800,000.

Joyce Davis, executive director of the Lincoln Park Community Center in Pittsburgh, runs a food pantry that serves about 150 families each month. About 90 percent of them are African-American.

Before the latest economic slump, Davis said, the pantry served 90 to 100 families each month, and the main customers were elderly people and single mothers.

America didn't always have a middle class.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the foundling nation had wealthy landowners, but everyone else was pretty close together, both physically and economically, said historian Stuart Blumin.

PITTSBURGH - In 1846, the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass came to Pittsburgh.

His purpose? He wanted to persuade a fellow African-American, Martin Delany, to become co-editor of his new newspaper, The North Star.

Two hundred-fifty thousand dollars. That's how much extra a good-looking American male will earn during his lifetime than his less attractive colleagues, University of Texas economist Daniel Hamermesh says. It's equivalent to about 1 1/2 additional years of schooling.

Six years after her husband fired a 12-gauge shotgun at her face, 47-year-old Connie Culp is seeing the world through another face.

When Tim McCaughan was promoted to assignments editor at CNN's Washington bureau several years ago, a woman congratulated him.

"It's much deserved," she said.

"How would you know?" he joked.

On Oct. 5, 1992, at 5:30 p.m., Louise Ashby was driving in Los Angeles. Newly arrived in Hollywood from Great Britain, the young actress was ready to seek her chance at stardom.

On April 5, 2003, at about 1 p.m., JR Martinez had been in Iraq for just a month when he was asked to drive the next stretch of road in his Army unit's Humvee.