What was going on when I was born?

JUANITA SCISM of Stafford signed a petition the other day opposing a shooting range. She hasn't heard the end of it since. She is a Stafford native, and in a town where hunting is a way of life, she said, such a reaction is no suprise. ''It's almost like going against God, going against these people,'' she said.

After a five-month inquiry, an independent counsel last week reported that he had found no evidence that Edwin Meese 3d, whose nomination to be Attorney General is stalled in the Senate, had broken any Federal laws. The investigation, overseen by Jacob A. Stein, a Washington defense attorney, was prompted by the revelation - after confirmation hearings had concluded - that Mr. Meese had failed to report a $15,000 interest-free loan to his wife from a friend on the financial disclosure reports he was obliged to file. Mr. Stein was also directed to investigate other questions that were raised during the confirmation hearings about Mr. Meese's financial affairs and whether he had helped arrange Administration jobs for several people who had loaned him money. In their examination of 11 specific allegations of possible misconduct, Mr. Stein and his investigators questioned 200 witnesses and called 45 of them to testify before a Federal grand jury.

The future of a family's house or condominium after the death of one or both of the owners is a matter of major concern to most families. Above all, there is the threat that the property may have to be sold to pay inheritance taxes. Lawyers have found that in certain instances the surviving spouse, usually the widow, may discover too late that she does not automatically have the right to occupy the house for the rest of her life. And in an age-restricted condominium, professionals warn, couples should be prepared for the problem of denied occupancy if the survivor or the heirs are below the minimum age.

Building along the inviting but flood-prone shore areas between the village of Westhampton Beach, L.I., and the Atlantic Ocean has always been a risky proposition. That is why zoning ordinances now require that any new construction be at least seven feet above sea level.

Nicaragua has announced that it will accept a draft peace treaty for Central America proposed two weeks ago by the four nations known as the Contadora group. The text of the draft treaty has not been made public, but diplomats and others familiar with its contents said it would require signers to offer amnesty to political dissidents, hold impartial elections under independent auspices and end support for groups fighting to overthrow other governments. In addition, the agreement would ban the construction of foreign military bases in Central America and would reduce and eventually eliminate military advisers from outside the area. Many Questions Open The agreement is considered an interim step toward a final peace, and leaves many questions open. Most notably, it does not commit any country to specific arms limitations. Instead, it establishes a commission to collect data and produce a formula to determine how much military power each country needs for defense.

At this point you might justifiably say, paraphrasing Edmund Wilson's dismissal of Agatha Christie and the whole murder-mystery genre, ''Who cares who killed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?'' Well, Peter Shaffer, for one. His play ''Amadeus,'' now transmuted into a Milos Forman film with a screenplay by Mr. Shaffer, shows that he continues to care deeply. Over the years, invoking a dramatist's license, he has taken ever more fanciful liberties with musical history to indict poor Antonio Salieri, the rival composer who in his last years supposedly confessed to poisoning Mozart. (He just possibly may have done so, though no hard evidence exists to support the idea.) By brilliantly intertwining fact and fantasy, Mr. Shaffer has given the Salieri legend a second-stage boost that is likely to keep it in orbit for this generation, just as Pushkin's poem and Rimsky-Korsakoff's opera on the same subject did in the 19th century. Perhaps it is up to the psychiatrists to tell us why we are so eager to believe that Salieri, the common man personified, is a black villain. But it appears that for our time, history be damned, Salieri did it.

RIO DE JANEIRO FOR the first time since Mexico's financial collapse ushered in the Latin American debt crisis two years ago, the specter of a default has been replaced by evidence of new cooperation between the key debtor nations and the big international banks. In recent weeks, Latin America's four major debtors - Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela - have taken steps toward alleviating their short-term debt burdens, raising hopes that relations between the region's most influential nations and their worried bank creditors may be entering a less turbulent period. Even laggard Argentina appears to be falling into line - heading at last for an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, although President Raul Alfonsin has been resisting an I.M.F. austerity program for months. The prospects of an agreement, on the eve of this week's annual joint meeting of the I.M.F. and the World Bank in Washington, have helped reassure major Western governments that Latin America's largest debtors have turned away from the path of confrontation. ''We are gaining time, important time, and we're convinced that there has been some progress,'' Jesus Silva Herzog, Mexico's finance minister, said recently. ''But the debt crisis persists because fundamental problems have not been resolved. Long-term solutions must be sought with the participation of all the protagonists - governments, international organizations, banks and debtors.''

There is a phenomenon and a riddle in the New York art world this fall. The phenomenon is that nearly every major museum, and several smaller ones, are mounting exhibitions of ''primitive'' art - art of tribal peoples from Africa, Oceania and North America - this month or next. The largest and most scholarly of the exhibitions begins this Thursday at the Museum of Modern Art, where the curator William Rubin and co-curator Kirk Varnedoe have produced a show that exhaustively documents the profound effects of tribal art on the development of modern art. Entitled '' 'Primitivism' in the 20th Century: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern,'' the show will run to Jan 15. Which leads to the riddle: Why now? What is the attraction of tribal art, that this fall our major museums are filled with it? And why did modern artists at the turn of the century find it interesting at all? Why did Picasso, shortly after being exposed to African masks and sculptures, direct his painting so emphatically away from the representational style that predominated even through the Impressionists?

Industrial and developing countries have decided on action to curtail international credits available for loans to debt-burdened countries, it was announced here tonight. The decision, which was made over the protests of many representatives of developing countries, was reached at the end of a day-long meeting of the policy-making Interim Committee of the International Monetary Fund. The 147-nation I.M.F. makes loans to third- world countries that need cash. The agreement, which reduces access to the I.M.F.'s resources, came about as a result of a compromise chiefly between the United States, which sought deep cuts, and developing countries led by India, which wanted no cut at all.

Strollers on Madison Avenue near 64th Street who have watched a painstaking restoration of the building at No. 740 are wondering why the scaffolding has been removed and the work has stopped, even though the two lower floors still bear the scars of time and neglect. ''Rest assured that we are not finished,'' said Samuel DeSanto, whose architectural company has overseen the effort to restore the 1879 residential and commercial structure now owned by the 740 Madison Avenue Corporation.''

WASHINGTON A N act of violence has again forced the Middle East to the top of the American political agenda after months in which the region was largely ignored, not only by the Administration but by the Democrats as well. Interest in the region, it seemed, rises only in time of war, conflict or acts of terror. The violence last week was shockingly familiar. For the third time in 17 months, Americans in Lebanon had fallen victim to terrorists driving a vehicle loaded with explosives. The death toll this time at the new American Embassy building in East Beirut was two Americans and six Lebanese employees, plus 15 others, according to Lebanese rescue sources - far fewer than the 63 killed when the old embassy in West Beirut was bombed in April 1983 or the 241 killed in the October 1983 attack on the Marine garrison at Beirut airport.

The MX's might be a little slower moving off the assembly lines in the future, but if Congress goes along with a compromise struck last week the Administration will get a Congressional go-ahead to further accelerate military spending in 1985. Under the agreement, which came after two weeks of private meetings between Senate majority leader Howard H. Baker Jr. and House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., Congress would have to take two separate votes next year before construction of a batch of 15 MX missiles could proceed. But the military would draw $292.9 billion in spending money for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, 5 percent more than it got for the current fiscal year. Even though the increase is larger than the level originally approved by the Democratically controlled House, Mr. O'Neill called the deal a victory for opponents of the MX missile. ''In my opinion,'' he said, ''the MX will never be deployed.''