By Kelly Forest, Chair, Moshannon Group; Vice Chair, Pennsylvania Chapter
Saturday, June 20, was Show Your Stripes Day. Warming stripes were originally created by Ed Hawkings. It is a visual interpretation of how the climate has changed yearly since 1895. Each year is a different color depending on what the average temperature was for the year. Red colors indicate a warmer than normal year and blue colors indicate a colder than normal year.
Shortly after June 20th, I met with a group of local women in State College who work on climate change to put together climate stripe bracelets. This activity came together with the thought that we needed more people out there to learn and talk about climate change. And this is where the story gets fun. When I got home from the event, I went out and bought myself more beads and made a climate stripe bracelet for the Arctic Ocean. And every day, I wear both my climate stripe earrings and the climate stripe bracelets (one is Pennsylvania and one is the Arctic Ocean). And every day, I have at least one conversation about what the bracelet means.
Today, the conversation happened outside Meyer’s Dairy, our local milk store. The man commented on my t-shirt (Climate Can’t Wait with the climate stripes on it). I explained what he was looking at. I asked him if he knew about the Sierra Club. He didn’t, and I had a conversation about the Sierra Club and its mission. Ten minutes later, we both went on our way, adding one more person who I connected with and talked about climate change.
Our annual camping weekend at Hickory Run is coming up in August. And what a fun thing it would be to leave after a weekend of outdoors, s’mores and community with a talking piece on your wrist. I hope you will consider joining us for the Sierra Club’s annual outing and find some time during the weekend to make your own climate stripe bracelet.
This blog was included as part of the August 2026 Sylvanian newsletter. Please click here to check out more articles from this edition!