What was going on when I was born?

TOWNSHIP 17, RANGE 4, Me.--It is the dead of winter in backwoods Maine now, and the summer people with their lakeside cottages, expensive power boats, $20,000 campers and $75 Italian hiking boots have long since gone back to their city homes with central heating and their jobs with pension plans.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8--Treasury Secretary G. William Miller acknowledged to a Senate committee today that he had failed to prevent improper overseas payments while he was chairman of Textron Inc., but he continued to deny that he had known of them.

To the seasoned consumer, whose jaded eye has taken in everything from the pet rock to generic beer, no new product, however offbeat, would seem to warrant astonishment.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8--Four leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today introduced "charter" legislation for United States intelligence agencies that would require the President to give prior notice of covert intelligence operations to at least eight members of Congress, even in a national emergency.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced yesterday that it had completed the reincorporation of the Long Island Rail Road to bring its employees under the jurisdiction of the state's Taylor Law, which prohibits strikes by public employees.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8--President Carter proposed today that both young men and young women be required to register for possible military conscription to demonstrate "our resolve as a nation" to resist further Soviet aggression in the region around the Persian Gulf.

PARIS, Feb. 8--The French Government said today that it would not send a representative to a meeting of Western foreign ministers scheduled for Bonn this month.

JERUSALEM, Feb. 8--In a twist of fate that has infuriated some Israelis, a 12-year-old Arab girl, described as outspokenly anti-Jewish, has received a kidney from the body of a Jewish student slain last week in the Arab market of Hebron.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y., Feb. 8--The president of the United States Olympic Committee, describing the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as an "act of war," said today that it was impossible for the city of Moscow "to fulfill the aims of the Olympic movement" as the site of the Summer Games.

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 8--Several elected state and local public officials and labor leaders in the Southwest accepted bribes from a Government informer and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a 10-month undercover operation, according to Government documents released here today by a Federal judge.

STOCKHOLM, Feb. 3--The commuter train going back to Sodertalje takes 40 minutes from downtown. It runs on a bridge over the islands that make up Stockholm. The water has frozen over and is covered with snow.