What was going on when I was born?

Another housing community developed by Levitt Homes is rising on Long Island. Known as Woodcrest, it will number 110 houses on 51 acres in Coram, in Suffolk County.

Two armed men wearing ski masks entered the parish house of St. Patrick's Cathedral last night, handcuffed four ushers and escaped with money gathered in collection boxes earlier in the day, the police said. The robbers, brandishing revolvers, forced two ushers to empty the safe in the basement of the parish house at 8:50 P.M., according to a police spokesman, Lieut. Edwin LeSchack. The safe contained an unknown amount of cash, including the day's collection box proceeds.

Christmas Stocking You would think only Santa would know what products will be in oversupply this Christmas. But Midge Ivie Tyner, chairman of Tradewell Industries in New York City, says she can usually make a good guess. Her company, which buys excess inventories and resells them to chains and discounters, thrives on the miscalculations of manufacturers and retilers. According to Miss Tyner, if the economy has had a good year, her purchases tend to be limited to newfangled products - ''items that come out and then don't make it.'' But in an average year - last year and this, for example - she buys up items whose popularity has been overestimated by manufacturers and retailers. Last year, she says, fashion jeans fell into that category.

Whatever else any great American playwright has done, each one has created, and in turn become identified with, a personal vision of the American family. If anything, the measure of achievement in American drama has been a writer's ability to place a vivid family portrait within a larger, societal frame - or, more to the point, to make the family represent not only the writer's inner life but a set of outer conditions. One thinks of Arthur Miller's men, hustlers who lived through one Great Depression and live in fear of another; of Tennessee Williams's women, cut loose with the fall of the plantation aristocracy and thrown into the cruel cities. O'Neill, Odets, Inge, Albee - all conjure images of the family at war with itself. And in a cycle of family plays stretching over a decade - and culminating with the opening of the newest one, ''A Lie of the Mind,'' on Thursday at the Promenade -Sam Shepard has painted a picture of domestic disharmony as striking as any to have preceded it. The wastrel father of ''Curse of the Starving Class,'' the Cain-and-Abel brothers of ''True West,'' the incestuous lovers of ''Fool for Love'' have become indelible characters in the contemporary American theater. So, too, has Mr. Shepard staked his claim to the landscapes - both geographical and psychological - of the rootless American Southwest and the beleaguered Middle Western farm belt.

A CHEERFUL gurgle from the faucet was one of the sounds of thankfulness last week as many New Yorkers, reveling in the city's announcement that rainfall had ended the seven-month drought emergency, let the water run while they brushed their teeth. Before restricted-flow shower heads could thud into too many wastebaskets, however, the Environmental Protection Commissioner, Joseph T. McGough Jr., warned that the city would seek to impose certain restrictions permanently. Miserly shower heads were on the list, along with requirements that commercial car washers use well water and that large buildings recycle the accumulated condensation from steam pipes by using it in their air conditioning systems instead of collecting it and throwing it out.

One year after a poison gas leak at the Union Carbide factory here, a major relief effort is reaching thousands of people while thousands more continue to have trouble breathing and working. Misery and rehabilitation can be seen side by side in the crowded and dusty slum abutting the plant, where death was almost instantaneous for hundreds of people when poison gas leaked from a storage tank late in the night of Dec. 2, 1984, and spread through the city in the early hours of Dec. 3. In interviews this week, slum-dwellers said that their health had not improved and that they feared they would not be able to earn a living. Every day, 3,000 people receive treatment from 20 medical dispensaries that have been built in this central Indian city in the year since the leak killed at least 2,000 people and injured 200,000 others. Mud Shanties and New Roads The crumbling shanties of mud and splintering wooden slats are still there, but so are newly built drainage systems, roads and a nearby hospital with 30 beds and examination rooms.

AMAZING facts about the Bears: 1. The defense has allowed just three touchdowns in the last seven games and none in the last 13 quarters. 2. When they beat the New England Patriots early in the season, 20-7, the Patriots had the ball on the Bears' side of the field for all of 21 seconds. 3. Seven players have intercepted three or more passes, and four have five or more sacks. 4. With three safeties, they are within one of tying the National Football League record for most in a season. 5. Through 12 weeks of play, their defense leads the league in - take a deep breath - fewest points allowed (127), fewest touchdowns allowed (15), fewest yards allowed (256.9 per game), fewest rushing yards allowed (82.3 per game), most sacks (50), most interceptions (30) and most interceptions returned for touchdowns (4). ''But we're not as good as we were last year.'' What? Who said that? Call the white coats. Is this guy serious? The little round man with the steel-rimmed glasses leaned back in his chair, calmly lit another match and held the flame to his pipe. Smoke billowed up. He drew from his pipe, then slowly let out the smoke. O.K., so he looks serious.

President Reagan said today that the United States would not hesitate to root out and prosecute the spies of any nation, letting the ''chips fall where they may.'' Mr. Reagan's remarks came at a time when the Administration is trying to have Israel abide by a pledge to make two of its diplomats available for questioning about a United States Navy employee charged with selling secret documents to Israel. The diplomats left the United States the day after the arrest of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the Navy employee, and Israel has resisted returning them to the United States for questioning. The diplomats have been described by Israeli Government sources as Mr. Pollard's contacts.

His first case, ditto young Watson. Good fun.

Through all of the miseries that have plagued the Knicks so far this season, there has been one hopeful constant: With Patrick Ewing on the court and playing well, they are capable of staying close to almost any team. But without him, forget it. Last night's encounter with the engimatic Philadelphia 76ers at Madison Square Garden effectively ended with 5 minutes 43 seconds remaining on the clock. That is when Ewing -who had more than held his own against the 76ers' indefatigable all-star center, Moses Malone - was charged with his sixth and final personal foul after an ill-fated attempt to stop the powerful forward Charles Barkley from driving to the basket on a fast break. Not only did Ewing foul out, but Barkley, who performed almost flawlessly, rammed in a two-handed dunk that quieted the sellout crowd and gave the 76ers a 10-point lead that was never challenged. They outscored the Knicks by 19-9 in those final minutes and earned a 115-95 triumph.

Israeli officials appear divided on how far to go in cooperating with the United States investigation of an American accused of spying for Israel, Government sources said today. Some senior Government officials are pushing for a full public explanation of Israel's actions. Others, however, want to try to handle the affair quietly and without an independent, formal investigation that might threaten the national unity Government. At the Cabinet meeting Sunday, a debate is expected among the ministers on what course Israel should take. U.S. Pressure Over Diplomats Pressure on the Cabinet to reach a quick decision was increased by a State Department demand that two Israeli diplomats reportedly involved be made available for questioning by American law-enforcment officials. These officials are investigating a United State Navy analyst, Jonathan Jay Pollard, who was arrested Nov. 21 and charged with selling secret American documents to Israel.

MIES VAN DER ROHE A Critical Biography. By Franz Schulze, in association with the Mies van der Rohe Archive of the Museum of Modern Art. Illustrated. 355 pp. Illinois: University of Chicago Press. $39.95. MIES VAN DER ROHE By David Spaeth. Preface by Kenneth Frampton. Illustrated. 205 pp. New York: Rizzoli. Paper, $25. MIES VAN DER ROHE The Villas and Country Houses. By Wolf Tegethoff. Translated by Russell M. Stockman. Illustrated. 223 pp. Cambridge, Mass.: The Museum of Modern Art/ The MIT Press. $55.