November 24, 1982

Caught in the worst financial crisis in its 20-year history, Channel 13, WNET-TV, the New York metropolitan area's major public television station, has abruptly postponed a multimillion dollar series and is likely to lay off staff and reduce programming. Channel 13 has a deficit of $6 million, a record liability largely attributed to operating The Dial, a two-year-old magazine of listings and articles about public television. The magazine has proven such a drain that some employees at the station now refer to it as ''Channel 13's Vietnam.'' ''The Dial has bled us,'' said Walter Goldstein, vice president of finance and administration at the station. ''It was a disaster from the beginning,'' added James Kobak, a magazine consultant who was brought in to analyze the magazine's problems late last year.

Under pressure from Congressional leaders, President Reagan today proposed a five-year, $32.9 billion program to repair highways and bridges and to assist mass transit projects. He proposed paying for the program mainly with an increase in the Federal gasoline tax and asked that Congress approve the program in its special session beginning Monday. The President's proposal came a day after Congressional leaders from both parties agreed to press for similar legislation, with or without Mr. Reagan's support. They had threatened to seize the initiative by directing their aides to draft a bill.

Alexander Theroux is the author of ''Darconville's Cat,'' published last year by Doubleday. IT was in July 1851 on one of his famous hikes - or ''excursions,'' as he'd prefer it - carrying a knapsack, a botany book (for pressing flowers) and his huge umbrella without which he rarely went anywhere that Henry David Thoreau visited the town of Plymouth, where a little more than 200 years before the first Thanksgiving had been celebrated. A mad antiquarian and eminent student of history, he characteristically poked about the relics of Pilgrim Hall and peered into the ancient records in the Plymouth County Courthouse, and then, over a driftwood fire, he cooked a giant clam that made him sick for days. There is no record of his eating turkey. He ate moose meat in Maine. He loved the taste of roasted horned pout. And he was fond of chewing acorns (''as agreeable to the palate as the mother's milk to the babe.'')

Now it begins again, the season of tinsel and white lights, the time that is supposed to be the best of times and yet so often is not. Tomorrow comes Thanksgiving, and after it the explosion of Hanukkah and Christmas, like a balloon filled with spangles bursting. And then there is the hilarity of the New Year, and life begins again. Thanksgiving came early this week for the six women in Marilyn Graubert's group: Mary, Christina, Bella, the other Mary, Maria and Emma. There were bialys with butter and one of those chocolate cakes with jimmies on top that look better than they taste, and while it may not have been what others are used to, no big bird browned in a slow oven or sweet potatoes glossy with butter, it was still something to mark the holiday, some way to feel part of the cycles of life.

Governor Kean, in a special address to the State Legislature today, proposed a package of budget cuts and tax increases on gasoline and alcoholic beverages to avoid what he said was a possible $150 million budget deficit in this fiscal year. Mr. Kean, a Republican, urged both houses, which are controlled by the Democrats, to reconvene on Monday and to stay in session until they had adopted either his tax program or one of their own to balance the $6.2 billion budget. Mr. Kean blamed the current problems on the nation's sluggish economy, which he said had depressed tax collections. But he said the state also faced a possible $500 million deficit for the 1983 fiscal year, which starts July 1. He attributed this possible deficit to unrealistic promises contained in the state's pension and aid programs, which outstrip the revenues designed to support them.