Living High Has Its Lows but It’s All for a Good Cause

--For a week now, William Weir has lived inside a billboard along one of Seattle’s busiest thoroughfares. A coffee company is paying him--he won’t say how much--to cram himself into the 176 square feet of space for 32 days and wave to passers-by. His presence draws people to a food-bank donation truck parked below the sign. “It’s a gimmick,” Weir said, “but the chance of knowing that I can be up here and . . . allow people to give food to this place--it allows me a very personal interest in the sense that I can finish the day and look down and look at the food collection and say, ‘You know, in some way I was a part of that.’ ” The 26-year-old actor said that life in the billboard is “almost like being a zoo exhibit . . . like camping at the Ritz. I have a color television set and my meals are catered . . . and at the same time, I have to take sponge baths and I have a Portajohn.”

--British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took a walk in the park, to the surprise of some Dallas residents. Thatcher and her husband, Denis, flew to Texas to visit their only son, Mark, and his wife, Diane, after a Commonwealth meeting in Vancouver, Canada, and neighbors in the Highland Park community were thrilled to see her walk through Flippen Park and stop to talk with about a dozen people. Although British and American security agents were present, bystanders were able to move freely in the park and to approach Thatcher. “I can’t believe I met her,” Brooke Altane, 12, said after she shook Thatcher’s hand. Mark Thatcher represents the Lotus sports car company in Dallas.

--Soviet Jewish activist Ida Nudel, who arrived in Israel last week after a 16-year struggle to be allowed to emigrate, spoke with President Reagan by telephone. “He told me he is very pleased I am in Israel and he hopes more Soviet Jews will be allowed to leave,” a beaming Nudel, 56, told reporters. “I thanked him for his help, but I was a bit nervous. He is only the second President I have ever spoken to,” said Nudel, who gained international fame for her work on behalf of Jewish prisoners in the Soviet Union. She said her first presidential conversation was with Israel’s Chaim Herzog, after she arrived in Israel Thursday aboard the private plane of U.S. industrialist Dr. Armand Hammer and received a red-carpet welcome. The overseas call to Reagan was placed by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who was meeting with Nudel in Israel. Shultz worked actively for Nudel’s emigration.