What was going on when I was born?

A parade of people - advocates for an alcoholic treatment center short of money in Schenectady, a hospital threatened with service cuts in Corinth, a toxic waste site in Guilderland - took their problems to Governor Cuomo today. He used the opportunity, as he began a series of public discussions on what people want in next year's state budget, to lecture them on how much harder it was to fashion the state budget than the Federal Government's. ''Suppose you could use your checkbook whenever you wanted something,'' the Governor said, ''and you never had to balance it. That's the Federal Government.''

Philip Morris Inc. said yesterday that it would write down the value of its Miller Brewing Company's new $450 million brewery in Trenton, Ohio. The move would reduce fourth- quarter earnings by an estimated $140 million. The decision reflects the stagnant nature of the American beer industry and the particular difficulties that have befallen Miller, the country's second-biggest brewer, after the Anheuser-Busch Companies.

An obituary of the actress Sudie Bond on Nov. 12 misidentified the author of ''The Sandbox,'' a play in which she appeared. The playwright was Edward Albee.

Infant bellies swollen by want and pale deserts haunted by thin- cloaked people and dead cattle: In Africa, the images seem to recur, cyclical emblems of dispair that bring stirrings of guilt to outsiders and then are forgotten until the next tragedy in a distant world. When the images flicker and fade, the tragedies do not stop. Even aid from well-intentioned relief agencies and the concern of the West, some specialists say, are deepening the problem and leading to criticism by African Governments that aid projects are ill-conceived and sometimes reflect the commercial interests of donor nations. Western consciences dictate that people should not be allowed to starve; but the specialists contend that by saving them, without finding a key to greater food production on fragile lands, too much pressure is placed on that land and it dies while dependence on outsiders increases. 300,000 Said to Die Since the early 1970's, up to 300,000 people are said to have starved to death in Africa because of drought that first spurred international attention in the sub-Saharan region of Africa.

Senator Bob Dole of Kansas was elected majority leader of the Senate today, defeating Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska by three votes in the final round of a tense and hard-fought contest. The election of Mr. Dole by the majority Republican members set off a chain reaction in the Senate and produced a new leadership team with moderates in several key posts. Senator Richard G. Lugar, an Indianan with appeal among both moderates and conservatives, who had come in third in the leadership race, will become chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, succeeding Charles H. Percy of Illinois, who was defeated for re-election earlier this month. Helms Stays With Agriculture Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a leader among Senate conservatives, opened the way for Mr. Lugar when he announced he would definitely not assume the leadership of the Foreign Relations panel.

Advisers sent President Reagan a deficit-reducing plan that would cut many domestic programs. Page D21. WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 - Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Representative Charles B. Rangel, New York Democrats, today strongly disagreed on the impact to the state of the Treasury Department's proposal to change the tax system. Senator Moynihan, a member of the Finance Committee, which will consider the plan, called it ''ruinous'' to the state and vowed to fight it. ''I'm on the Finance Committee to see it doesn't happen,'' the Senator said.

With Bob Dole as their new majority leader, Senate Republicans have chosen a voice of independence from President Reagan's White House and given Mr. Dole a more visible platform for any run for the party's Presidential nomination in 1988. The longtime Senator from Kansas, who calls himself a moderate conservative, has frequently differed with the President on deficits, taxes and such issues as civil rights. He has taken the lead in promoting bipartisan packages when White House proposals have faltered and Mr. Reagan has hesitated to initiate compromises. In the first few minutes after he emerged from the old Supreme Court room in the Capitol where he won his victory, Mr. Dole signaled a desire to work with the President. But he gently indicated that he would feel free to interpret the interests of Senate Republicans in his own way, especially with 22 of them facing re-election in 1986.

MY father was a Welshman, and in 1950, when he retired, he bought Leighton Hall on the borderland between Wales and Shropshire. You will find Leighton on any good-size map, because it has been a manor for centuries and there used to be a fine half-timbered manor house that was already old in the reign of Henry VIII. But somewhere around 1840 the property was bought by John and Jane Naylor of Liverpool; they were great shipowners and certainly not Welsh. They tore down the old manor and employed an architect to create for them a house, congruous with their great wealth and self-esteem, in the extreme of Victorian Gothic style. This was the house my father bought and in which he lived for 17 years.

The Exxon Corporation said yesterday that it was discussing with other companies the sale of its once-pioneering office systems division. The division's products have in recent years lost market share to such industry leaders as the International Business Machines Corporation and Wang Laboratories. Analysts said a sale of the division would be another example of the oil industry's trend away from diversification. Many of these ventures, generally begun in the 1970's, have been unprofitable or have fallen short of expectations.

''Recent history has proven that we cannot assume unilaterally the role of the world's defender.

Excerpts from speech, page A5. WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 - Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger said today that United States military forces would not be drawn gradually into combat in Central America, but that if forces were committed anywhere it must be with the clear intention of winning. Pentagon officials said Mr. Weinberger wanted to assert that any use of military force would not be indiscriminate and that the Reagan Administration intended to avoid being dragged into a quagmire in Central America. Mr. Weinberger, in an address at a National Press Club luncheon meeting, also suggested that Congressional restraints on presidential applications of military force should be modified. Pentagon officials said later he referred to the War Powers Act.

The Treasury proposal released yesterday, which strives to restore fairness, efficiency and simplicity to the tax code by eliminating most tax preferences, is arousing a range of powerful and diverse interests that have benefited from those preferences. Most of those interests are well organized, with large associations and powerful lobbyists, in contrast to the tens of millions of individual taxpayers who do not use the tax preferences and who are, on the whole, the main beneficiaries of the Treasury proposal. The Treasury proposal is extraordinary in some respects, and it may produce extraordinary consequences - for example, bringing together groups that are usually adversaries, such as labor and business, on such issues as taxation of fringe benefits. In other areas, such as deductibility of charitable contributions, the plan would make it more difficult for charities to raise money at a time when the Administration is seeking to shift some social services from government to the private sector. Finally, it finds Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan, a former Merrill Lynch chief executive and friend of business, proposing to eliminate tax breaks for banks, oil companies, insurance companies, manufacturers and stockbrokers.