June 19, 1983

HER story reads like a page from Greek mythology and might have beene ntitled, ''Julie's Odyssey.'' Julie Moss, after all, was swift, as w as the goddess Atalanta, who was so fleet and proud that she vowed n ever to marry any man unless he was capable of defeating her in a f ootrace. Miss Moss did not enter the Bud-Light Ironman Championship Triathlon in Hawaii on Feb. 6, 1982 with any expectation of outdistancing all the men, but she knew that if she performed to her potential, she could finish first among the women and leave more than one man in her wake. The Ironman Triathlon is a grueling test of endurance that would tax even a modern-day Pheidippides. The three-stage race begins with a 2.4-mile ocean swim, followed by a 112-mile spin on a bicycle and last, those 26.2 miles on foot. The only breaks are for a change of clothing and perhaps a brief shower after each event.

The celebration over sending the first American woman into orbit has tended to overshadow the fact that Dr. Sally K. Ride is to be the first person to perform one of the most significant tasks of the space age. Reaching into the void with a 50-foot robotic arm, she plans to capture a satellite as it hurtles about the earth and, using mechanical might conferred by gears and motors, bring it safely to rest in the cargo bay of the space shuttle. Her aerial exercise points to the not-so-distant future when it could be routine to grasp satellites, mine asteroids, build space stations - in short, to clutch and shape instead of just to pass through space as an awestruck visitor. It marks a new stage in the taming of the high frontier.

WHEN wind drifts in from the southwest on a summer's day, Connecticut residents, especially those in New Haven and Fairfield Counties, often experience stinging in their eyes, burning in their throats and some have trouble breathing, say state environmental officials. Exactly where that polluted air comes from, how much of it flows across Connecticut's borders and precisely what pollutants it contains are the basis of an ongoing dispute between state and Federal environmental officials. New York, New Jersey and some Middle Western states permit industries within their borders to burn fuel with a sulfur level higher than Connecticut allows. Sulfur is a major pollutant. Connecticut officials contend that dirty air from states with more lenient pollution laws eventually drifts into Connecticut. For years the state has been trying to get the Federal Government and those states to cut those sulfur levels.

We live in a time of penance, operatically speaking, but let's try to see the bright side. Although the age of masterpieces may be past, like the age of miracles, the scarcity, at the moment, of stirring new works has provided us with breathing space, with more than enough time to go sifting through the detritus of the past for buried wonders. Generally, of course, such digging leaves the musical archeologist with little more than dust in his hands. Every excavator into dark and dusty regions of the repertory comes to understand that most neglected works have been neglected for good reasons, not always because our ancestors had tin ears or armor-plated souls. But immense shifts in style and taste do take place. Many operagoers now understand and enjoy the better works of the opera seria style, such as ''Idomeneo,'' which only a few years ago was tolerated only by the hard-core Mozart lover. Monteverdi and Handel have been reassessed. Berlioz has a foot in the door at the Metropolitan Opera and so does Poulenc. The late operas of Strauss turn up and, of course, so do formerly obscure operas of Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini. And the sifting goes on.

In the eyes of many children Fred Rogers, the man who has been entering the nation's living rooms for two decades on ''Mister Rogers's Neighborhood,'' is America's nurturing, surrogate dad. And, of late, an increasingly busy dad. This Father's Day weekend marks the debut of Mr. Rogers's comic opera for children ''All in the Laundry'' at the Opera Shop of the Vineyard Theater in Manhattan. His first book for grownups, ''Mister Rogers Talks With Parents,'' has been in bookstores since the beginning of the month, and this week he'll be taping his next prime-time television special for parents, about day care, which will be broadcast in the fall. And last week he began work on a new batch of episodes for his half-hour series, which will help children to deal with conflict and aggression. Yet, despite all of this energetic activity, the appeal of Fred Rogers continues to derive from that singular melding of directness, gentleness and vulnerability which first made him a television phenomenon. And, as he extends his presence beyond the borders of ''The Neighborhood,'' as he calls it, he is finding it easier to relax a bit more about the condition of being Fred Rogers. ''I've grown,'' the 55-year-old Mr. Rogers says simply of his new equanimity in his 29th year of children's television.