What was going on when I was born?

Seven years ago, an Ecuadorean priest with pinched cheeks and somber demeanor looked out over the depleted congregation at Sunday mass at St. Barbara's Roman Catholic Church in the north Brooklyn community of Bushwick and contemplated what seemed to be a neighborhood's death rattle. Four days earlier, at 9:34 P.M. on July 13, 1977, a power failure plunged New York City into darkness and, within minutes, mobs of looters raced through dilapidated blocks of wood-frame apartments toward Broadway, the neighborhood's main shopping street. By morning, the street, shrouded in the shadows of an elevated train line, was a shambles of broken glass, wooden police barricades, looted stores, flames and smoke - the most heavily damaged street in the city during a steamy night of looting, with 124 stores ruined. Fire and Destruction That was the first blow to the Bushwick section. A few days later, as a less spectacular trail of arson, drugs and crime wove its way through half-abandoned side streets, a 10-alarm fire, one of the largest structural fires in the city's history, erupted near another anchor of the neighborhood, Myrtle Avenue, and destroyed 24 buildings in a four-block area.

Governor Cuomo set the tone and tactics for the Democratic campaign by telling the nation tonight to ''look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship'' of Ronald Reagan's Presidency and see that a regal insensitivity had divided American society ''into the lucky and the left out.'' To a convention of Democratic politicians frustrated by confronting a ''Teflon Presidency'' to which opposition charges will not stick, the New Yorker advised that instead of trying to match Mr. Reagan's oratory, they forcefully attack ''the hard substance'' of the Reagan record and its impact on American society. In a speech that was both shrewd and forceful, the New Yorker told the Democratic partisans that the road to victory lay in separating ''the salesman from the product,'' in distinguishing between a popular preacher and his controversial programs. A Speech Like a Lawyer's And, with a pounding refrain against the fairness of the Reagan policies, he sought to undercut the public relations skill of the Reagan White House by asserting that ''no slick commercial, no amount of geniality, no martial music'' could muffle a well-honed Democratic message.

The United States, seeking to avoid a crisis within the Pacific alliance, will probably not send Navy warships to New Zealand waters until mid-1985 at the earliest, senior American officials said Monday. This means, an aide to Secretary of State George P. Shultz said, that the new Labor Party Prime Minister, David Lange, will have a ''comfortable amount of time'' to decide whether to maintain his party's pledge to ban all nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed ships from New Zealand's waters. Alternatively, the aide said, Mr. Lange could seek to modify the pledge and thereby avoid a possible break in the 33-year-old Anzus alliance with the United States and Australia. Anzus stands for Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

For Walter F. Mondale and his senior aides, the past few days have been trying and turbulent. But for one group of political veterans they have been as sweet as a Vidalia onion. The resurrection of Bert Lance, who was named general chairman of the Mondale campaign, has rejuvenated many of the young men and women who took the fall with Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. For now, at least, they feel accepted, if not vindicated.

In 1971, during her sixth pregnancy, Rita Noe took Bendectin, a prescription anti-nausea drug - and her daughter, Michelle, was born with a webbed left hand. Last weekend, on Michelle's 12th birthday, Merrell Dow Pharmaceutical Inc., the Cincinnati-based manufacturer of Bendectin, agreed to put $120 million into a settlement fund to pay damages to the Noes and more than 700 other families who have filed lawsuits arising out of birth defects they say were caused by Bendectin. Mass settlements in product liability cases are a relatively new phenomenon that theoretically allow companies to put product liability claims behind them in a quick, if expensive, stroke. The proposed Bendectin fund, to be endowed over 18 years, would be the third-largest settlement fund in history. ''We're very happy about the settlement,'' Mrs. Noe said. ''Court proceedings can be very long and drawn out, and if we can, we'd like keep Michelle from going through a trial with all the attendant hassle and media. The only reason I would want a jury trial would be to bring out the fact that the drug is unsafe, but actions speak louder than words, so I guess that's established, no matter what the company says.''

Consumers, credited with propelling the economy's lively expansion, took on more than $10 billion in installment loans in May, the Federal Reserve said today. It was far and away the largest monthly increase on record. ''This is an explosive rise in credit, evidence of one of the most powerful upsurges in consumer spending in history,'' said Norman Robertson, an economist at the Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh.

Since the beginning of the personal computer business about seven years ago, Japanese companies have been expected to invade the rich American market and take a big share of it, as they had with automobiles and televisions. But the invasion has never materialized. And many Japanese executives are growing increasingly pessimistic that it ever will, at least in the same way it did in autos and consumer electronics. ''For the next 10 or 15 years, Japan has no choice but to follow the American lead,'' said Kikuo Okuda, editor of Business Computer News. The Japanese manufacturers are a step behind because their computer technology - especially in software - and their marketing efforts lag behind America's. Analysts also cite cultural differences that exacerbate technological and marketing problems.

The union that struck 27 private hospitals and 3 affiliated nursing homes in New York City last Friday struck 11 of the city's largest private nonprofit nursing homes yesterday. With both sides far apart on the issues and no direct negotiations scheduled, Federal mediators said they foresaw no immediate end of the walkout. The hospitals that were struck Friday felt the full impact of the strike for the first time yesterday morning when many of them, especially those where nurses joined in the walkout, were forced to cancel elective surgery, close outpatient clinics and reduce admissions. Mostly Nonmedical Workers A total of 49,500 workers were on strike, most of them nonmedical personnel such as orderlies, nurse's aides, housekeepers, clerks and technicians. Nurses also struck in five hospitals and several nursing homes.

The Dining Out Guide in Weekend last Friday gave an incorrect address for the Shanghai Wok in Ocean Township, N.J. It is at Route 35 and Deal Road in the Middlebrook Shopping Center, (201) 493-8118.

WHEN Secretary of State George P. Shultz arrived in Kuala Lumpur last week on a state visit, Malaysian officials greeted him with what must have seemed a strangely familiar question: How can they get their children into Ivy League schools? The inquiries reflected Malaysia's new prosperity and commitment to technological development. It also pointed up some of the changes now taking place in the foreign student population in this country. After more than three decades of dramatic increases, the number of foreign nationals in American colleges and universities has leveled off at approximately 340,000 students. ''The growth rate is now less than 1 percent a year,'' said Elinor G. Barber, director of research at the Institute of International Education.

An article June 27 about HBO documentaries misidentified the producer of the PBS series ''An American Family'' 10 years ago. He was Craig Gilbert. Alan and Susan Raymond had the title of film makers.

American industrial research, once thought to be wilting in the face of economic recession and Japan's technological challenge, appears to be surging ahead with unexpected vitality. For several years, American companies have been raising their research expenditures far faster than the rate of inflation, hiring the best college graduates in science and engineering, setting up new consortiums to perform fundamental research of value to all companies in an industry and forging new links with leading universities and academic scientists. In a shift of historic roles, American industry is now spending more money on research and development than is the Federal Government, which for decades had been the chief patron of science and technology. Industrial scientists are also achieving greater power in the making of Federal science policy, with technical officers of corporations now holding the top posts in the White House Science Council, the National Science Board and the National Science Foundation. ''The health of industrial research and development is probably the greatest it has been since corporations first discovered that they ought to do research and development,'' said Hugh H. Miller, executive officer of the National Academy of Engineering, the nation's top honorary society for technologists and engineers. ''Almost all the major corporations now are putting more money into their research and development programs.''