What was going on when I was born?

UPTON, L.I.--Several years ago, when the price of home-heating oil was just starting to rise, Federal housing officials politely urged real-estate developers and builders to change their methods of construction and to turn to...

THE bus ride from Nashville to Orlando, Fla., takes 10 hours. Hardly anybody flies in the minor leagues. Minor league baseball players are supposed to ride buses. They are told it builds character.

PEKING, Aug. 30--With words and phrases such as "profit," "increased competition" and "market forces" echoing through the Great Hall of the People, Chinese leaders met today in what they said would be a historic session of the National People's Congress to transfer governmental power to a new generation of leaders and further loosen central control of the economy.

In every agency where George Lois hangs his hat and name (and there have been many), perhaps advertising's best-known art director has treated space similarly. Each of his offices have been impressively large and sparsely furnished.

Revived and maybe even rescued, the New York Yankees made it three straight over the Seattle Mariners last night in Yankee Stadium and stretched their lead to 2 games in the chase for the American League's Eastern title.

NEW CANAAN WHEN you're a 9-year-old soccer player with knees as knobby as a colt's, it can be unsettling to look up and see 170 pounds of grimacing Englishman running straight at you and yelling at you pass off the ball in the one or two seconds remaining before he runs over you. "Don't rush it!" he is saying. "Now pass! Good lad."

CAMDEN ALTHOUGH one of them has re ceived less of his attention, Governor Byrne has two bistate port authorities to deal with, the big one involving New Jersey and New York and a smaller sister linking New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Anthony J.D. Rhodes of the Bank of America's London office took the call from Jan Woloszyn at the Bank Handlowy w Warszawie on the ninth day after the outbreak of strikes in the northern port cities of Poland.

WARSAW--The Baltic coast strike that rocked Poland's economy, brought down practically half the party leadership, and rang alarm bells in Moscow and Washington, moved rapidly toward a settlement last week. But the issues and problems it raised cut so deeply that even if the workers go back to their jobs, the conflict is far from over.

WHEN the 1980-81 school year begins Tuesday, education officials will be armed with new authority to carry out what they see as their mandate to insure a thorough and efficient education for every public-school pupil in the state.

IT'S no wonder that up till now criticism has shunned the travel book. As a literary form, travel writing is a notoriously raffish open house where very different genres are likely to end up in the same bed. It accommodates the private diary, the...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 30--Representative John B. Anderson, the independent candidate for President, and his running mate, Patrick J. Lucey, today offered voters a four-year program for running the Government and said it would require of them "a patriotism greater than party."