What was going on when I was born?

PRESIDENT REAGAN reached out to local governments last week, seeking support from the nation's governors and county leaders for his program of redefining responsibilities, or the ''New Federalism.'' The results, according to County Executive Alfred B. DelBello, were mixed. ''We endorsed the concept of re-allocating appropriate programs to local governments,'' Mr. DelBello said, after returning from Washington, ''but we attached five pages of conditions to our resolution - I hope he reads them.'' The President, for his part, pledged not to transfer responsibilities without appropriate resources.

QUESTION: What do ''The Hotel New Hampshire'' by John Irving, ''Forever'' by Judy Blume and ''Little Red Riding Hood'' have in common? Answer: They have all been targets for complaints in local libraries. Although there has been no discernible trickle-down effect from the Island Trees case, in which the School Board in Levittown banned nine books in 1976, Long Island's librarians recently filed a friendof-the-court brief opposing the board's action. The case has reached the United States Supreme Court, where opening arguments will be heard on Tuesday. Librarians on the Island have also geared up to handle any attempts at what they consider censorship in their libraries. ''Though we hate to admit it, I think the Moral Majority has had some influence,'' said Dr. Ralph Folcarelli, professor of graduate library science at the C.W. Post Center of Long Island University and chairman of the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Suffolk County Library Association.

Poland's Roman Catholic episcopate called today for an end to martial law, freedom for those detained under its provisions and a national covenant in which Solidarity would partcipate. The call was issued after a two-day meeting in Warsaw of all the country's bishops. Although the episcopate has previously called for an end to martial law, as in a pastoral letter read in churches Jan. 24, the new statement was the strongest by the church since the military crackdown began Dec. 13. Western diplomats predicted that once it was disseminated among Poland's 18,000 parishes, the document could provide a focus for popular discontent with martial law.

If any fact can be said to underscore how quickly revolutions age, it is that half a century has passed since the day the Museum of Modern Art put a few photographs and models into its galleries under the title, ''International Exhibition of Modern Architecture.'' Behind that bland and unassuming label was one of the most determined efforts at design proslytizing this or any other museum has ever engaged in. For this exhibition was the celebrated ''International Style'' show, in which the museum presented the stark, white buildings of stucco and glass and metal by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and others that it wanted us to think would pull us out of the stultifying classicism of the 19th century and pave the way to a glorious new world. How old all of this now seems, and how far away from what has happened to architecture since. The freshness, the daring, the triumphant sense of newness that was the International Style's stock in trade is today neither fresh nor daring, and least of all is it new. If anything, the works of architecture that appeared in the exhibition by now seem quaint; the sense of revolution they represented comes across now not as powerful but more as prim, puritanical, and not a little innocent.

Since the age of the transistor dawned at Bell Laboratories in 1947, the United States has dominated what is now the $13 billion global semiconductor industry. In a business where prowess and profits have been measured by the ability to squeeze more and more electronic circuitry into less and less space, companies like Texas Instruments, Intel and Motorola have raced to outdo one another, sometimes trumpeting each new advance well before it was ready for market. The companies grew cocky and prosperous, innovation followed innovation, and shrinking electronic circuitry gave birth to everything from desktop computers to talking clocks. The industry is now developing yet another promising product that will appear on the market in a year or two. The product, known in industry parlance as the 256K dynamic RAM (for random access memory), is a silicon memory chip smaller than a postage stamp yet capable of storing all the words on a page of this newspaper.

ONE week before the Multi-Town Solid Waste Management Authority awards a contract for construction of a solid waste resource recovery facility to replace Huntington's and Babylon's landfills, criticisms of the size, cost and environmental effect of the project are once again mounting. The capacity of the multimillion-dollar plant, originally proposed to convert garbage to energy for four towns, was modified when Smithtown and Islip dropped out of the project. The political rhetoric between Republicans and Democrats has been replaced by charges that the authority's board members lack the professional competence in sanitation and construction necessary to evaluate the three construction proposals under consideration. But over all, the basic concepts regarding construction, operation and financing remain unchanged. Authority members and elected officials who were designated by the state in 1978 for the specific purpose of building this type of facility - some have been involved for over a decade - adamantly maintain that the conversion plant is the best and only solution to a garbage pile-up that has reached critical proportions in both towns.

In a reversal of the withdrawal of private investment in housing in the area, nearly 400 tenants at the large Fordham Hill housing complex off Fordham Road in the West Bronx have elected to buy their apartments as cooperatives. The figure comfortably exceeds the number required to convert the nine buildings of Fordham Hill to a cooperative. The tenant-sponsored conversion effort is using an eviction plan, so that nonpurchasing tenants, unless they are senior citizens, will eventually have to move. The crucial number of purchase agreements needed for the conversion was 245. That many were obtained a few weeks ago. Since then, the number pledged to buy has risen to 390.

RUTGERS ENDS WEST VIRGINIA STREAK AT 23 27,318 WATCH SYRACUSE BOW SYRACUSE, Feb. 27 (Special to the New York Times) - After two big St. John's leads had dissolved before the largest crowd to see a college basketball game on a campus, and after St. John's had overcome the Syracuse comebacks and the raucous crowd in the Carrier Dome, and after 13 years of frustration in this city had ended with a 80-76 victory today, Lou Carnesecca was asked about hunting. The question was not all that out of place for the St. John's coach. After his team had won at Boston College in the final seconds last Feb. 3, Carnesecca, a hunter, said, ''My bird dogs got their first bird.'' A week later when the Redmen had won at Connecticut in overtime, Carnesecca said, ''My bird dogs got their first bird.'' So this afternoon, when St. John's won before 27,318 with a lineup that included three freshman in the final minutes - after David Russell, a junior, had fouled out with 5 minutes, 59 seconds to play - a clarification was in order.

GOVERNOR CAREY'S latest education-aid proposal continued to draw sharp criticism last week from members in the Westchester County delegation, who believe that the plan spells ''disaster'' for the county's school system and doubt that it will win approval from the State Legislature. Although Westchester would receive $143 million, a gain of slightly more than $11 million under the plan put forward by Mr. Carey two weeks ago, 28 of the county's 40 school districts would lose aid. Under Mr. Carey's proposal, for example, Port Chester would lose one-hundredth of 1 percent of its aid, or $176. While the loss appeared to be too slight to cause any major disruptions within the district's educational program, the mere idea of taking money away from an area that has witnessed an exodus of business and a shrinking tax base brought forth the ire of State Senator Joseph R. Pisani, a Republican whose district includes Port Chester.

UNIONDALE SINCE the end of World War II, Long Island officials have been struggling with plans to develop Mitchel Field, the former military base in the heart of Nassau County and one of the largest and choicest pieces of undeveloped real estate in the New York area. Now, bulldozers are clearing the last large expanse of those sand and clay fields, and builders are constructing several major projects that Nassau County Executive Francis T. Purcell said had ''created more new jobs for county residents and put valuable property back on the tax rolls.'' Sixty-six acres of Mitchel Field are to remain undeveloped and preserved as a surviving remnant of the county's original 60,000 acres of prairie land, which farmers plowed into potato fields before builders developed such communities as Garden City, Mineola, Uniondale, East Meadow, Hicksville and Levittown. Naturalists say that one can still find clusters of the famed Hempstead violets that covered the field and the surrounding Hempstead Plains, which stretched for 16 miles. Although the 1,265-acre Mitchel Field site still appears to be mostly wide-open spaces, the end appears in sight, and Mr. Purcell said the entire tract would be committed to use by the end of the year.

The public pronouncements of Republican Congressional leaders last week left little reason to doubt a White House spokesman's characterization of their private tone. In an 80-minute meeting with President Reagan on his 1983 budget proposals and its $91.5 billion deficit, there was, David R. Gergen said, ''some plain talk among friends.'' Before then, Senate Budget Committee chairman Pete V. Domenici had already made it about as plain as could be. ''Congress,'' the Administration's pointman in 1982 told a business research group in New York, ''just won't pass (the 1983 budget) in its present form.'' Like many other prominent party figures, Mr. Domenici had his own plan, the most comprehensive of the half dozen put forward. Defense outlays through 1985 would grow only 5 percent after inflation, costof-living increases in entitlement programs would be frozen for 1983 and taxes would be increased by $122 billion over three years, preferably by closing tax loopholes.

PRINCETON PPRINCETON UNIVERSITY students garnered the largest number of Rhodes Scholarships awarded to Americans this year. Of the 32 recipients, five were from Princeton. Yale placed second with three recipients, followed by the Air Force Academy with two. Harvard, which has traditionally dominated the competition, had one. Four seniors - Barton D. Gellman, Donald W. Hawthorne, Bruce N. Reed and Michele S. Warman, and a 1980 graduate, Michael W. Fleming - prevailed over a field of nearly 1,200 applicants to become the newest Rhodes Scholars from Princeton.