What was going on when I was born?

WASHINGTON, April 14--President Carter has selected Robert V. Keeley, a 50-year-old career diplomat with a reputation for blunt speaking and a cool head in a crisis, to be the first United States Ambassador to the new African nation of Zimbabwe, Administration officials said today.

METAPHORA" is the word that graces the sides of moving vans in Greece. That, in fact, is what metaphors can do: move the mind's furniture down the street, suddenly.

The Koch administration said yester day that it intended to translate some of the ways New Yorkers traveled during the 11-day transit strike into a permanent program to ease traffic congestion in Manhattan.

MOSCOW SOME 30 Soviet scientists who lost their research positions after applying to emigrate to Israel crammed into a small apartment living room yesterday to hear from a group of visiting Western colleagues about recent scientific developments in their fields.

Until recently, the country's 22,000 foundations, with their amassed wealth of $32.4 billion and reputations for impressive accomplishment, have enjoyed the good life. They have been free from the competitive pressures of the marketplace and, in the words of one director, have been "flattered, wooed and romanced interminably by grant seekers."

Mayor Koch calls him one of his "closest friends and advisers." Those in and around the corridors of city government call him the gray eminence of the Koch administration, the Mayor's most trusted confidant.

LOS ANGELES, April 14--"Kramer vs. Kramer," the story of a child-custody fight, won the Academy Award for best picture tonight on an evening when the only surprise was the complete lack of surprises.

SCIENTISTS believe they are edging closer to understanding the enigma of bird migration. Evidence is accumulating on how interlocking forces, circumstances and capabilities cause a bird to begin and endure its grueling journey of perhaps thousands of miles and then help it to unerringly locate its destination.

WASHINGTON, April 14--There is growing agreement among American intelligence aides and energy experts that the Soviet Union faces a decline in oil production in the 1980's that could lead Moscow to compete with the United States and its allies for access to the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf.

Four bus lines in Queens agreed yesterday to resume operations this morning, as most travel returned to normal after the 11-day strike by 33,000 New York City bus and subway workers that ended Friday night.