What was going on when I was born?

AFTER years of luring developers, four Connecticut cities are now searching for ways to cope with the resulting booms. Officials, developers and neighborhood groups in the four cities - Hartford, New Haven, Norwalk and Stamford - have recently been debating so-called linkage proposals that tie office and condominum development to low- and moderate-income housing and jobs for local residents. Linkage is a relatively new issue in urban politics. Its supporters consider the concept a safeguard against ''giving away'' cities to the wealthy. Detractors say the concept violates free-market principles and drives away investors.

A long day followed the long night, but this time, things worked out better for the Yankees. They beat the Brewers here this afternoon, 2-1, when Dale Berra hit a line drive single to right field off the reliever Bob Gibson that sent Dave Winfield home from second with the winning run in the 13th inning. Winfield singled to open the inning and then stole second. After seven scoreless innings, the Brewers went ahead when Cecil Cooper, batting against the Yankees' starter, Dennis Rasmussen, singled Paul Molitor home from second with two outs in the eighth inning. The Yankees tied the score in the ninth after Ray Burris, Milwaukee's starter, loaded the bases with two walks and a single. Rollie Fingers came in to pitch and Dan Pasqua, a pinch hitter for Bobby Meacham, hit a sacrifice fly to even the game.

SINCE last Monday, even the Havasupai Indians living at the base of the Grand Canyon are able to receive next-day delivery of letters via the United Parcel Service. Under a complicated plan devised by the company in case the need ever arises, a U.P.S. driver with an urgent letter will drive 50 miles on a dirt road from Valentine, Ariz., to the rim of the canyon. He will then hand over the letter to a mule-train operator who, for a $35 charge to U.P.S., will transport the letter on its rocky final leg. The price of the letter to the sender is the standard fee: $8.50. Sending a letter by mule train - and at a loss -may be the most extreme use of U.P.S.'s week-old service. But it illustrates how serious U.P.S. is about entering the overnight-letter market, the fastest-growing but most competitive segment of the parcel delivery business. U.P.S.'s new service promises next-day delivery of letters between any two addresses in the nation, a service that even the United States Postal Service does not offer. By blanketing the country, wooing new customers and using a distribution network already in place - many letters will be carried in the same vans as parcels -U.P.S. hopes that its sheer volume to profitable destinations will cover any losses associated with going to such places as the Grand Canyon.

For decades, the West Side between Houston and Canal Streets has been an industrial neighborhood where printing and graphic arts companies have congregated. But recently, as the traditional boundaries of the financial district have been pushed to the west and north, office uses by companies in other businesses have begun to expand.

According to Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, the state of ''Taxachusetts'' no longer exists. In fact, Mr. Dukakis boasts, the tax burden in Massachusetts - the amount residents pay in state and local taxes and fees as a percentage of personal income - has fallen below the national average. And he plans to keep it that way with a temporary tax cut this year and opposition to what he considers excessive increases proposed for teachers' salaries and welfare payments. Mr. Dukakis is a leading example of a trend among liberal Democratic governors who have changed as the country has become more conservative and as states have sought innovative ways to fill a vacuum caused by the reduction of Federal assistance. An Increasing Independence Those governors have used what had been considered Republican practices: keeping taxes low, instituting stern measures to save money and offering incentives to business and industry in the hope of providing jobs. At the same time, the governors have sought to maintain their old Democratic coalitions of unions, the poor, minority groups, civil servants, urban interests and others, through innovations in social programs that go beyond the Federal Government.

HOW do the Mets do it? With one-third of the season gone, they started the weekend hitting .225 as a team, and only the San Francisco Giants had a worse average in the National League. No regular was hitting .300, and three weren't even hitting .200. Gary Carter, the cleanup man, went 26 days without hitting a home run. Darryl Strawberry was hitting .215 when he tore ligaments in his thumb and went on the disabled list for two months. George Foster, a man with 321 home runs in his career, was batting .216. Ray Knight, the third baseman, stood at .188. Howard Johnson, imported from the Detroit Tigers because of his bat, was swinging it at .165. The second-base platoon of Wally Backman and Kelvin Chapman totaled .220. The shortstop, Rafael Santana, was at .217, and there was no backup shortstop.

After a 16-month inquiry, the State Investigation Commission yesterday issued widely conflicting reports on the events leading to the release of 600 prisoners from Rikers Island in 1983 and on changes that should be made in the criminal-justice system. Three panel members, including its chairman, found that a lack of coordination among various departments made it impossible for the city and the state to respond when a Federal judge first threatened to release prisoners from Rikers because of overcrowding. They called for an overhaul of the criminal-justice system, including the establishment of a Criminal Justice Department that would operate such state units as the state police and the prisons, and would assume responsibility for operating county jails and overseeing local police departments. But the commission's three other members disagreed, arguing that such a department would place too much power in one agency. They fixed blame for the release of the prisoners not on inherent problems in the system, but on city officials, who they said were too slow to respond to jail overcrowding.

ON Memorial Day weekend, Debra J. Depue and Jason R. Mayers Jr. were married under a canopy of blue sky in the flowering splendor of the Frelinghuysen Aboretum in Morris Township. Earlier in the spring, Jayne Sillcox and William Prickett exchanged vows in the 126-year-old Methodist Church on the grounds of historic Waterloo Village in Stanhope. And next month, Richard Scheetz and Mary Lou Reid will be married in the bucket of an aerial ladder 75 feet above the grounds of Washington Crossing State Park. Such traditional wedding sites as a local house of worship, a country club or a catering establishment are running into competition these days from less-orthodox nuptial settings - from quiet meadows and scenic vistas to restored historic mansions and chapels.

How would the Federal Reserve Board -- Washington's most independent economic actor -- react if the Senate and the House manage to reduce the Federal deficit for fiscal 1986 by $25 billion to $35 billion? Allen Siani, chief economist at Shearson Lehman Brothers, who thinks this scenario is increasingly likely, predicts that the Fed would be forced to offset the restrictive economic impact of such a deficit cut.

THE DANGEROUS SUMMER By Ernest Hemingway. Introduction by James A. Michener. Illustrated. 228 pp. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $17.95. HERE we have a great writer who set out to write an epilogue that turned into a book-length manuscript that died of unwieldiness but was years later edited to its literary essence and became a book, truly, and is here with us now, and is good. The epilogue was conceived by Ernest Hemingway in 1959 to conclude a new edition of his 1932 treatise on bullfighting as life and art, ''Death in the Afternoon.'' Life magazine editors heard of his plan and asked him to expand the piece into an article of a few thousand words, which they hoped to publish as successfully as they had published his novella, ''The Old Man and the Sea.''

The commander of the South Lebanon Army, Gen. Antoine Lahd, today ordered the release of 4 of the 23 Finnish soldiers of a United Nations force held hostage by his Israeli-backed militia, and he termed the move a ''good-will gesture.'' The four were handed over to the headquarters of the Finnish contingent in southern Lebanon, an Israeli military spokesman said. General Lahd, however, said that until 11 South Lebanon Army militiamen in the hands of the Shiite militia Amal were returned, he would not free the rest of the hostages. He also ruled out deals with the Beirut-based leader of Amal, Nabih Berri.

Choreographers have been a major influence on Broadway dance. George Balanchine brought the discipline of classical technique to show dancing in ''On Your Toes.'' Agnes De Mille integrated dance with theater in ''Oklahoma!,'' And Jerome Robbins made the choreographer as important as the director in shows such as ''The King and I'' and ''West Side Story.'' But it has been 21 years since Broadway welcomed ''Fiddler on the Roof,'' staged by Mr. Robbins, the last great musical to have been directed by a choreographer from the concert stage. Now, Twyla Tharp, the iconoclastic modern dance choreographer, is about to make her directorial debut with ''Singin' in the Rain,'' a $4.5 million stage adaptation of the 1952 movie musical. The production, with Don Correia in the role that helped to make Gene Kelly a star, opens Thursday at the Gershwin. Betty Comden and Adolph Green have adapted their screenplay for the stage. Five songs have been added to the film's score by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. A trolley, a train, a tap-dancing horse and a gleaming white Bugatti travel through Santo Loquasto's sets during this saga of Hollywood in the early days of talking films. And the stage of the Gershwin will be awash each day in 1,500 gallons of heated water pumped up 50 feet and sprayed out onto a little moonlit square near Hollywood Hills for the exuberant, climactic splash-dance number that gave the film its name.