What was going on when I was born?

Take a small country with no oil, plenty of sunshine and lots of scientists, and you have a perfect laboratory for intensive research into solar energy. Israel fits the bill, and in recent years, with the help of grants from the United States Government and private donors abroad, scientists say that significant progress has been made on harnessing some of the 250 watts of power that are estimated to fall on every square yard of the country on an average sunny day. One out of every three Israeli homes already gets hot water from rooftop solar heaters - simple, flat glass plates laced with water pipes to absorb sunlight - and they provide about 1.5 percent of the country's energy needs. Although this is a small amount, it is still one of the highest in the world, according to the Ministry of Energy. Experts say that the number of households using such solar heaters is expected to rise by 50 percent in the next fews years and, by the year 2000, about 10 percent of the country's energy is scheduled to be solar.

Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis suggested today that New York City might have difficulty trading in funds earmarked for construction of the Westway and using the money for mass transit. This is so, the Secretary said, because such funds are allotted on a first-come, first-served basis, and other places have applied for trade-ins while New York City and state officials have debated whether to build the superhighway on the West Side or to divert the money to shoring up the troubled transit system. Mr. Lewis's remarks were made at a hearing on transportation problems held by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Transportation and Tourism. Agreement on M.T.A. Plan Meanwhile, after a three-hour meeting in Albany, Governor Carey, Mayor Koch, Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink and Richard Ravitch, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, were in virtual agreement on the details of a plan to pump $5 billion of improvements into the M.T.A. system over the next five years. (Page B3.)

''I HAD the voice when I sang the blues in my youthful days. I didn't gyrate to them. The blues are supposed to be serious, and I sang them as the master taught me.'' ''The master'' was W.C. Handy, ''the Father of the Blues,'' who composed and published the first blues songs in sheet-music form. His ''St. Louis Blues'' is so timeless that only the other day, 67 years later, it appeared on a new album, ''Rocket 88,'' recorded by an English band including Charley Watts, the drummer for the Rolling Stones. Mr. Handy's pupil was his very own daughter, 78-year-old Katharine Handy Lewis. Feeling a little under the weather the other day, she was in bed, talking over the phone from the home she shares with her son in the Bronx. But she's not complaining about her health. No, she's singing snatches of ''Porgy and Bess'' and humming passages from ''Rhapsody in Blue'' to demonstrate George Gershwin's debt to her father. And she's eagerly anticipating her performance this evening at Carnegie Hall, where she will sing ''Yellow Dog Blues'' and - what else? - ''St. Louis Blues.''

After more than a decade of delays, New York City was ready to begin a billion-dollar effort to complete its basic sewage treatment system. But city officials now say President Reagan's proposed budget cuts once again threaten the entire program. The city had planned to ask the Federal Government for $560 million in the next fiscal year to complete the North River sewage treatment plant near Harlem and the Red Hook treatment plant at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Although city officials said they believed they had the backing of the Carter Administration, such a large allocation for one city would have been difficult to get even under that Administration's proposed total appropriation of $3.6 billion for sewage plant construction.

Within the past month, a flurry of stock-trading scandals has tested the detective skills of a little-publicized team of analysts at the New York Stock Exchange. On Feb. 3, a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley & Company and three others were accused of profiting from the use of confidential information on prospective mergers. Just two weeks later, the Securities and Exchange Commission obtained a consent degree against Frederick Wyman 2d, a broker at L.F. Rothschild Unterberg Towbin, and his father, Frank Wyman, for violating insider trading rules. And last week the financier Edward M. Gilbert was convicted of 34 counts of stock manipulation.

For the first time since New York City's long-term credit dried up in 1975, a major securities rating service said yesterday that the city's bonds were a reasonably good investment risk. The Standard & Poor's Corporation gave the bonds a grade of BBB, which meant that the concern believed New York was able to repay its debts ''in a timely manner.'' Prices of New York City bonds, already well above the lows reached during the 1975-76 fiscal crisis, rose further yesterday after Standard & Poor's announcement. (Page D5.)

Atlanta will receive nearly $1 million in Federal grants to finance mental health and social programs related to the case of the city's missing and murdered children, President Reagan announced in Washington today. Atlanta residents of all ages have been gripped with anxiety and fear in recent months because of the disappearance of 21 black children, 19 of whom have been found dead, and because police investigators have been unable to solve the murders. Today's action by the President was greeted by city officials as an aid to their efforts to activate programs addressing some of the mental health problems of children in the city, particularly those in six areas on the south side of Atlanta where most of the murders have occurred. Meanwhile, members of the City Council engaged in a spirited debate on a proposed ordinance that would further restrict the movement of children about the city and, some hoped, lessen their vulnerability. But the measure, which would prohibit peddling by anyone under the age of 14, except in certain specific cases, was rejected by voice vote after sympathetic opponents argued that the measure would excessively restrict children's freedom of movement. Just a few weeks ago, the city adopted an ordinance imposing a 7 P.M. curfew on children 14 and under. Some of the victims were known to have tried to earn money by doing odd jobs and selling merchandise at shopping centers and on the streets.

President Reagan plans to ask Congress to eliminate the $321 million Federal program that finances legal aid for the poor and to abolish the independent corporation that administers the program, the Office of Management and Budget said today. State governments would be free to finance legal aid for the poor with a portion of the Federal block grants they would receive under the Administration's budget-cutting proposals, the budget office said, but they would not be required to do so. Critics of the proposal said it would wipe out many legal aid offices that serve the poor in noncriminal cases and would subject those that remain to the political whims of state and local officials whom they often battle in court. ''This simply means that poor people will be denied their day in court and it will kill the legal services program,'' Dan Bradley, president of the Legal Services Corporation, said.

Police officers and a bank-robbery suspect exchanged shots on a crowded Fifth Avenue corner yesterday in a shootout that left the suspect dead, one officer wounded and scores of startled midday pedestrians scrambling for cover. One pedestrian was slightly wounded as bullets flew across streets, spraying a busy Schrafft's restaurant and the W.& J. Sloane furniture store, at 38th Street and Fifth Avenue. The shooting ended a wild 10-block hunt for the suspect, who first shot at police officers at 47th Street and the Avenue of the Americas after allegedly getting $3,900 in a holdup at the Bowery Savings Bank there. The suspect, 27-year-old John Lesko of Brooklyn, then ran to Fifth Avenue, where he comandeered a taxicab. Officers in a patrol car, alerted by a radio description of the cab, pulled it over just south of 38th Street.

Mayor Koch yesterday reversed himself and announced his opposition to the proposed exchange of the city playground at 42d Street and First Avenue for the two parks in the Tudor City apartment complex, effectively killing the deal. The exchange had been proposed to prevent Harry B. Helmsley, the real estate developer, from building on the two private parks around which the apartments are built. The plan was approved by the Planning Commission on Feb. 9. Mr. Koch, in a statement, said he had changed his mind because another developer, Donald J. Trump, had expressed interest in paying a higher price than Mr. Helmsley for the playground property and because recent appraisals indicated the ''parcels are not of equal value.''

''The senseless and brutal murders of these children is deeply and painfully etched in the consciousness of our people.

Elaine Comparone, the harpsichordist, and other performers will inaugurate a series of concerts tonight at 8 at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Greenwich Village, 371 Avenue of the Americas, in honor of Vernon Kroening, the 32-year-old music director of the church who was killed last November by a man who shot into a crowd of people on West Street. The program includes works by Bach, Handel, Telemann and Mozart. Proceeds are earmarked for the purchase of a concert grand piano for the use of artists performing at St. Joseph's, a project begun by Mr. Kroening shortly before his death.Tickets are $7 ($4 for students and the elderly). Information: 741-1274. A GARDEN OF FACES ON 57TH ST.