December 3, 1982

''To all those doom criers, and they are worldwide, we have a message.

On occasion, residents of this little community in the Berkshire foothills will look up to find tourists standing in their front hallways and living rooms. They live in a community easily mistaken for a living museum, with its pure white Congregational church overlooking a village green (with cannon) and block after block of white clapboard homes with black or green shutters. The National Park Service once described it as probably the ''finest surviving example of of a typical late 18thcentury New England town.'' Now, pigmentation has reared its ugly head in Litchfield, and many residents are strenuously objecting to what they see as this corrosion of Colonial charm. The Methodists have painted their white church a color, several colors actually - light gold and dark gold with blue window sash, not to mention the tricolored roof in gold and two shades of brown.

The Sanitation Department said yesterday that 400 truckloads of refuse had gone uncollected in New York City on Wednesday and Thursday because of a sudden increase in truck safety inspections and ''a slowdown in work performance'' by sanitation workers. The reduction in collections, which was citywide, left about 2,400 tons on the street out of the 17,000 tons normally collected each day, the department said. The report of a slowdown came as the Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association was pressing in contract negotiations for pay increases of at least 16 percent over the next two years.

International Ways to avert an accidental war proposed by President Reagan and made public in his Nov. 22 speech have evoked interest on the part of the Soviet leadership, according to Administration officials. They said the Kremlin had sent Mr. Reagan a message asking where the United States wanted to discuss the proposals in detail and were told that the Administration wished to pursue the subject at the arms control talks in Geneva. (Page A1, Column 4.) American aid for Lebanon's Army over the next year has been pledged by the Reagan Administration. United States officials said that American forces would train and help rebuild the Lebanese Army so that it could eventually maintain the country's internal security. (A12:3-4.)

Asserting that inadequate salaries discourage able candidates from seeking state judicial posts and sitting judges from remaining in them, particularly in New York City, a special commission is recommending judicial pay increases amounting to $20.2 million. The panel, the Temporary Commission on Judicial Compensation, suggests in a report scheduled to be released today that all judges in the state system be given pay raises, and that judges in New York City and Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk Counties be given, in addition, a 16 percent bonus. The bonus is to cover higher living costs and to deter the judges from seeking the more lucrative employment that is available in these areas. The panel recommends that the increases, which it says are ''the minimum necessary'' to keep the state's judiciary functioning at an acceptable level, take effect Jan. 1. However, the increases, must be approved by the State Legislature.