What was going on when I was born?

The President of the United States went calling on an old friend in New York yesterday. And his friend, Terence Cardinal Cooke - gravely ill with leukemia - greeted Mr. Reagan and the First Lady with a benediction: ''May the Lord bless us and keep us. ''May He let His face shine upon us and be gracious to us. ''May He look upon us with kindness and give us His peace.

Because of an editing error, the Economic Scene column in Business Day Friday misstated the change in nonfarm business inventories.

Machine tool orders, reflecting the usual lack of activity during the summer, fell 22 percent in August from July, the National Machine Tool Builder's Association said yesterday in its monthly report. On a year-to-year basis, however, the trend continued to be upward, with orders posting a healthy 59 percent gain from August 1982.

More than three weeks after a South Korean airliner with 269 people aboard was shot down by the Soviet Union, important details about the incident remain clouded.

The Reagan Administration, fighting an uphill battle to get Congress to approve financial support for the International Monetary Fund, found itself isolated in the international community Sunday in pressing for curbs on loans to poor countries. The I.M.F., which manages a network of financial aid for the third world, opens its annual meeting here on Tuesday. Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan, with an eye on Congress, took a tough position Sunday on the major questions of help for the financially distressed nations at a preliminary meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors. Two Main Issues According to participants at the closed meeting, Mr. Regan held firm on two main issues.

For millions of Brazilians who a short time ago had never heard of the International Monetary Fund, the agency has today become a three-letter word. The I.M.F. is being increasingly blamed here as the cause of business failures, job dismissals, shortages of essentials, bread lines and a perceived loss of national sovereignty. The phenomenon is producing intense political difficulties at home for Brazilian leaders in their efforts to settle their debt difficulties abroad. The spread of the fund's influence in Brazil, a result of the economic conditions that the agency has set in return for the economic assistance it is supplying to Brazil, is mirrored in other nations to which the I.M.F. has lent money. Whether the fund should indeed be able to impose such conditions is a question to be addressed this week when the I.M.F. opens its annual meeting in Washington.

Ten years ago energy for most Americans was an invisible wonder - something people did not see and did not pay much for. Beginning soon after the Arab oil embargo in 1973 and the successive price increases imposed by OPEC, however, the way Americans used energy became amply evident in fuel bills that got steeper by the month. As a result, millions of Americans began to reshape the way they worked and played. Homes are now cooler in winter and warmer in summer. Many families skip pleasure trips. They squeeze into compact cars and tool along at 55 miles an hour or something like that. Like pioneers, lots of people harvest their own food in backyard gardens. The rise in energy costs has also exacted a toll on the national psyche. As individuals were forced to trade down - from Rivieras to Rabbits - a country of plenty had to adapt to an era of limits.

THE Giants have every reason to be frustrated in this young pro football season. - They have lost two of their first three games. They dropped their opener to the Los Angeles Rams, a team they figured to beat, because the offensive line played badly. They then upset the Atlanta Falcons, only to lose to the Dallas Cowboys because of mistakes. - Injuries in the last two months have sidelined such regulars or near regulars as Harry Carson, Bill Neill, Leon Bright, Floyd Eddings and Johnny Perkins. Only three can be reactivated this year without exposure to irrevocable waivers.

Is The National Lampoon still funny? The company's earnings and stock price certainly have not brought smiles to investors' faces recently. And some wonder whether the magazine has lost its flair for humor. ''It's very predictable - the same features every month,'' said Joey Adams, an advertising copy writer who sometimes writes for the magazine. ''Before, it was a lot more experimental, a lot more political, a lot more willing to take risks. Now you can open it up, and you basically know what's there.''

Carting away the rubble from the fire took a year. There was so much of it: bits of charred shingles and brick, embers from the balcony, shards of the nine century-old stained-glass windows that firefighters had shattered to get at the flames. Then the restoration began. Youths from the neighborhood did most of the work. With hands caked by soot, they rebuilt the roof and the balcony and the walls. And yesterday, five years after a blaze that left a gutted shell of St. Mark's in the Bowery, the 184-year-old Episcopal church was officially rededicated.

The Jets lost Freeman McNeil for 6 to 8 weeks. Three players suffered concussions. Mark Gastineau was punched for show-boating. And yet, when the four-hour game ended after dusk at Shea Stadium last night, the Jets were leaping and laughing. So were most of their fans as Pat Leahy's field goal after 8 minutes 22 seconds of overtime lifted the Jets to a 27-24 victory over the Los Angeles Rams.

The State Department's top official responsible for trade with Communist countries resigned today to protest recent moves within the Reagan Administration to take a tougher stance on the sale of high technology to the Soviet Union. William A. Root, director of the Office of East-West Trade, said in his resignation letter to the President and to Congress that the United States had set off a ''time bomb'' that will lead to a ''major, justified explosion of Allied resentment'' against this country's export policies. ''The arrogance of the United States Government,'' Mr. Root wrote, ''is rapidly eroding the effectiveness of controls on the export of strategic equipment and technology.''