Happy Tuesday in New York City, where — just like your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, younger siblings and emergency babysitters — we’re still talking about the Knicks.

Hidden behind the chaos of adult fans going wild in the streets, a smaller celebration is taking place inside homes across the five boroughs. Younger Knicks fans may not have suffered quite as much heartbreak as the older ride-or-dies, but they’re fired up about the win, too. They sported the blue and orange colors to school for weeks; they successfully lobbied Zohran Mamdani to legally extend their bedtimes for the Finals run, and now, they want to celebrate at the ticker tape parade with the rest of their city.

Problem is, the parade is scheduled for Thursday — a school day. To make matters worse for high-school aged students, it will coincide with the regents exams, a city-wide standardized test for which many students have been preparing all year.

Parents and students have already begun circulating petitions urging the mayor to cancel school and postpone the regents.

“This scheduling conflict creates a profound issue of equity and fairness,” wrote Michelle Weintraub, who started a petition on behalf of her 13-year-old son and his classmates. “Depriving [students] of the chance to celebrate their city’s historic milestone — while adults and non-testing students freely attend — is inherently inequitable.”

Some students, employing all the sophistry of their most shameless English essays, have argued that the parade represents an important learning opportunity for NYC teenagers. “The parade is an educational experience in itself, rich with lessons about sportsmanship, history, and the power of dreams coming true,” wrote 12-year-old Sebastian Crosa, who launched a petition on change.com.

Mamdani, however, swiftly put the kibosh on hopes of a mayoral intervention. “This is something I cannot repeal,” Mamdani said on NY1, referring to the regents exams.

So, it appears teenagers from Tottenville to Throggs Neck will be bent over their desks on Thursday, while some four million New Yorkers bathe in the confetti on Broadway.

For the sake of the children, let’s hope the next championship doesn’t take another 53 years.

Read more briefs here.

On a gray Saturday earlier this spring, a loose assembly of birders gathered outside the Salt Marsh Nature Center at the edge of Marine Park. They arrived in twos and threes, gloved and quietly alert, with the expectant manner of people who had come for something that might not happen.

There was talk of a woodcock, which is not a bird so much as an event. Few had seen one yet that year. No one expected to see one that afternoon. Still, the possibility held the group in place.

At the center of it stood Peter Dorosh, who has been birding in Brooklyn long enough that people speak of him as if he belongs to the landscape he moves through. When someone asked what the chances were, he said,  “... I know they’re in there. They’re just not cooperating yet.”

Birding depends on faith in the cover, timing, weather, habitat and stubborn privacy of wild things.

Read on to learn more.

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