Page 8A
BUSINESS/TECH
East Oregonian
Saturday, October 7, 2017
BRIEFLY
NEW BIZ ROUNDUP
New Main Street
store offers
lavender products
Cup holder
innovator
revives
business
PENDLETON — Every-
thing’s coming up lavender
at 333 S. Main Street in
Pendleton.
Dawn Alderman has
operated the space as a
wedding rental shop called
John Loves June for three
years, but she moved her
previous inventory out
and opened it Sept. 8 as
Lavender Mercantile Co.
“We’ll introduce lavender
treats and goodies to our
customers,” she said.
Besides the flower
itself, Alderman is selling
lavender lemonade, lavender
cupcakes and plans to
expand her selection to jams
and biscuits.
The flowers are locally
sourced — Alderman owns
her own Pendleton lavender
farm — and she also features
products from other local
artisans like lotions, greeting
cards and jewelery.
Lavender Mercantile is
in the midst of an “extended
soft open,” but despite
the lack of advertising or
promotional work, Alderman
said she’s already received
repeat customers.
Alderman said the
business will continue to
evolve and expand and offer
new services like tintype
photography.
Crazy Mike’s
Video to close in
Hermiston
HERMISTON — Crazy
Mike’s Video in Hermiston
is closing.
Owner Sam Jackson
made the announcement on
Facebook this week that the
video store will rent out its
last video on Sunday, before
putting all of the store’s
merchandise up for sale on
Monday.
Sales will start out at $5
per DVD or five for $20,
with barely used premiers
and Blu-rays priced at
$19.99 and television shows
at varying prices. Jackson
said the sale will provide
people with the opportunity
to buy “quite a few treasures
that are out of print.”
She wrote on Facebook
that the announcement was
made with sadness, but “the
combination of technology
and the wage increase has
made it impossible for us to
sustain.”
Jackson had previously
stated in interviews with
the East Oregonian in 2013
and 2016 that if minimum
wage continued to climb in
Oregon she would likely
have to “kiss the business
goodbye.”
Crazy Mike’s Video is
located at 115 E. Highland
Ave. in Hermiston, with
hours from noon to 9 p.m.
on Sunday through Thursday
and noon to 10 p.m. on
Fridays and Saturdays.
Nonprofit board
training coming
to Pendleton
PENDLETON — Board
members and staff of
nonprofit organizations
across Eastern Oregon can
register now for a training
event Saturday, Oct. 14
in Pendleton, hosted by
the Center for Nonprofit
Stewardship.
The training will run
from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at
the Pendleton Convention
Center, featuring
talks on the roles and
responsibilities of board
members, understanding
financial information, risk
management and successful
program evaluations.
Presenters will include
Rosalie Westenskow,
attorney with the Center
for Nonprofit Law; Leslie
Witt, certified professional
accountant with Witt
Consulting; and JoAnne
Bunnage with SharedVision,
LLC.
For more than 14 years,
the Center for Nonprofit
Stewardship has been
helping nonprofit groups
solve legal, financial,
fundraising and leadership
issues by educating
board members and staff.
Registration for the training
is $95, which includes lunch
and materials.
To register, visit www.
nonprofitsteward.org or
contact Heidi Henry at
541-230-1036.
East Oregonian
AP Photo/Bill Gorman
In this image from video, Jake Nelson, AAA’s director for traffic safety advocacy and research, drives
one of the test vehicles used in the study in Washington, Wednesday.
Tech-crammed cars adding distractions
Traffic, pedestrian deaths spike in 2016
By JOAN LOWY
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The infotain-
ment technology that automakers
are cramming into the dashboard of
new vehicles is making drivers take
their eyes off the road and hands
off the wheel for dangerously long
periods of time, an AAA study says.
The study released Thursday
is the latest by University of Utah
professor David Strayer, who has
been examining the impact of
infotainment systems on safety
for AAA’s Foundation for Traffic
Safety since 2013. Past studies also
identified problems, but Strayer said
the “explosion of technology” has
made things worse.
Automakers now include more
options to allow drivers to use
social media, email and text. The
technology is also becoming more
complicated to use. Cars used to
have a few buttons and knobs. Some
vehicles now have as many as 50
buttons on the steering wheel and
dashboard that are multi-functional.
There are touch screens, voice
commands, writing pads, heads-up
displays on windshields and mirrors
and
3-D
computer-generated
images.
“It’s adding more and more layers
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Traffic fatalities rose 5.6 percent
traffic fatalities last year, with even
bigger spikes in pedestrian and
motorcyclist deaths, the govern-
ment said Friday.
There were 37,461 people
killed on U.S. roads in 2016 as
Americans continue to drive more,
the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration said. The
fatality rate was 1.18 deaths per
100 million vehicle miles traveled,
a 2.6 percent increase from the
previous year.
Traffic deaths have been
increasing since late 2014, as
gas prices have fallen and people
started driving more. In 2016, the
total number of miles driven in the
U.S. rose 2.2 percent.
Pedestrian deaths hit their
highest level since 1990, with
5,987 people killed. That figure
represents a 9 percent increase
since the previous year.
of complexity and information at
drivers’ fingertips without often
considering whether it’s a good idea
to put it at their fingertips,” Strayer
said. That complexity increases
the overall amount of time drivers
spend trying to use the systems.
The auto industry says the new
systems are better alternatives for
drivers than mobile phones and
navigation devices that were not
designed to be used while driving.
The vehicle-integrated systems
“are designed to be used in the
driving environment and require
driver attention that is comparable
to tuning the radio or adjusting
climate controls, which have always
been considered baseline accept-
able behaviors while driving,” said
Wade Newton, a spokesman for the
Alliance of Automobile Manufac-
turers.
But Jake Nelson, AAA’s director
for traffic safety advocacy and
research, said drivers took their eyes
off the road and hands off the wheel
while using infotainment systems in
each of the 30 cars and light trucks,
all 2017 models, that were tested in
the study. The drivers used voice
commands, touch screens and other
interactive technologies to make
calls, send texts, tune the radio
or program navigation all while
driving.
When her children were
younger, Cherylene Wallace felt
like she didn’t have enough hands
to juggle her kids and their cups
and bottles.
Wallace and a friend bounced
some ideas off of each other until
they came up with The Cup Corset,
a reversible cup holder with a strap
that allows the user to keep their
hands free while on the go.
Since moving from Richland,
Washington, to Pendleton four
years ago, the business went
mostly dormant before she decided
to revive it this year.
Wallace created a new website,
obtained a business license from
the city in September and will
now appear at various bazaars and
outdoor marketplaces throughout
Pendleton.
In addition to her original
creation, Wallace also sells corsets
for mason jars and ice cream pints.
Wallace said some of the places
she’ll sell her wares this year
are bazaars at Wildhorse Resort
& Casino, the Pendleton Early
Learning Center and Altrusa.
The Cup Corset is one of seven
business licenses the city of Pend-
leton issued in September. Below
are the rest of the business names,
their physical or mailing address
and their owner or contact person.
• Robert Alan Property Manage-
ment Inc., 127 S.W. Emigrant Ave.
#1,, Pendleton, Robert Alan
• Face Lingerie Duo, 1201 N.W.
Carden Ave., Pendleton, Leah
Rogers
• Auralcare Hearing Centers of
America LLC, 248 S.W. Dorion
Ave., Pendleton
• Heather Ficken, 84771 Dorran
Road, Helix
• Point Monitor Corp., 5863
Lakeview Blvd., Lake Oswego
• Paldin Professionals, 909 NW
Bailey Ave, Suite 7, Pendleton,
Nathan Goud
Hurricanes cause rare monthly job loss; rebound likely
By CHRISTOPHER
RUGABER
AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON — A
pullback in U.S. hiring
last month resulting from
Hurricanes Harvey and Irma
will likely prove short-lived,
with a resilient job market
pointing to gains in the
coming months.
The unemployment rate
fell to a fresh 16-year low of
4.2 percent, from 4.4 percent,
the Labor Department said
Friday in its September jobs
report. The proportion of
Americans with jobs rose to
a nearly nine-year high. And
even long-dormant wage
growth showed signs of
picking up.
The economy lost 33,000
jobs last month — the first
monthly loss in nearly seven
years — as the hurricanes
closed thousands of busi-
nesses in Texas, Florida and
other parts of the Southeast.
Yet hiring is widely expected
to rebound in coming
months as companies reopen
and bring back workers and
construction firms ramp up
repair and renovation work.
Previous natural disasters,
such as Hurricane Katrina in
2005, also inflicted short-
term job losses that were
followed by intensified
hiring.
AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez
In this Thursday, Aug. 24 photo, Phil Wiggett, right, a
recruiter with the Silicon Valley Community Founda-
tion, looks at a resume during a job fair in San Jose,
Calif.
“The
labor
market
remains in good shape,”
said Gus Faucher, chief
economist at PNC Financial.
“The job losses were due to
disruptions from hurricanes,
not underlying weakness in
the economy.”
Outside of hurricane-hit
areas, many Americans
found work. The number
of people describing them-
selves as unemployed fell
to 6.8 million, the fewest
since March 2007, before the
Great Recession began.
That sign of health makes
it appear all but certain that
the Federal Reserve will raise
its benchmark short-term
interest rate in December.
According to data from the
CME Group, investors now
foresee an 88 percent chance
of a Fed rate hike then.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen has
said she expects pay raises to
accelerate as unemployment
declines. That, in turn, might
lift inflation closer to the
Fed’s annual 2 percent target
level if companies raised
prices to pay for higher
salaries.
Last month’s drop was
driven by huge losses in
restaurants and bars, which
accounted for 105,000 fewer
jobs, a sign of the damage to
Florida’s tourism industry.
Overall, roughly 1.5 million
people were unable to work
last month because of the
weather, the government
said, the most in 20 years.
Hourly workers who
couldn’t work because of the
storms last month and missed
a paycheck would have been
counted as not working in
the government’s survey of
businesses, thereby lowering
September’s job total. That’s
true even if those employees
returned to work after the
storm passed or will return.
The unemployment rate
fell because it is calculated
with a separate survey of
households. That survey
counted people as employed
even if they were temporarily
out of work because of the
storms. In fact, the propor-
tion of adults who have jobs
rose to 60.4 percent, the
highest since January 2009.
That’s a sign that the low
unemployment rate is pulling
more Americans off the side-
lines and back into the job
market. During the recession
and the sluggish recovery
that followed, many people
gave up searching for work.
Dan Harmon, chief oper-
ating officer of Smoothie
King, a 900-store chain based
near New Orleans, said the
storms temporarily closed
66 stores in the Houston area
and disrupted the company’s
end-of-summer hiring. One
store was so damaged it still
hasn’t reopened.
In August and September,
the company typically hires
new employees to replace
college workers who return
to school. But that process
was delayed in Florida and
Texas.
“We weren’t able to do
our normal hiring spree that
we usually do going into the
fall,” Harmon said.
The storms also disrupted
the company’s expansion
plans. It opened 65 stores
nationwide in the July-Sep-
tember quarter. It would
have opened four more, but
they were damaged while
under construction. Each
Smoothie King employs
about 15 hourly workers and
two to three managers.
I NTRODUCING
P HONAK D IRECT
C ONNECTIVITY H EARING A IDS
FREE ADULT
FLU SHOTS
St. Anthony Hospital
Parking Lot
Drive Through Clinic
Saturday, October 7th
10am - 2pm
• Direct connectivity to any cell phone *
• Hearing aids used as a wireless head-
set for hands-free calls
• Excellent TV sound quality1 with
hearing aids turned into wireless TV
headphones
Phonak direct connectivity hearing aids offer universal connectivity to any cell phone* regardless of
the brand or operating system. With direct connectivity hearing aids, Phonak offers a solution
that provides true hands-free functionality just like a Bluetooth® wireless headset. The hearing
aids utilize it’s built-in microphones to pick up the clients voice for phone calls. A call can be
heard ringing directly in the hearing aids and with a simple push of a button, can be answered or
rejected. This can be done at distance from the telephone e.g. while a client is positioned on the
other side of a room.
Direct connectivity also extends to media playing with automatic connectivity to any TV or stereo
system through a new and compact, multimedia hub called TV Connector. It delivers excellent
stereo sound quality up to 15m away and does not require any additional streaming device.
With Phonak direct connectivity hearing aids, clients can enjoy the freedom of universal connectivity
2801 St. Anthony Way
Pendleton, OR 97801
www.sahpendleton.org
541-278-3262
RENATA ANDERSON M.A.
2237 Southwest • Court Place
Pendleton, OR 97801
541-276-5053