AGOURA HILLS : Students See Positive Side to Medieval Life

Middle school student Steven Goodman and three of his pals, studying the life of medieval monks, have decided it might not be such a bad thing to spend all one’s time in meditation and prayer--if the only requirements were to take a vow of poverty and obedience and to swear off girls forever.

But give up their snowboards, their basketball shoes or their dirt bikes? That, they say, would be something else again.

“Monks don’t get to ride dirt bikes,” Steven said.

He and Shaun Selter, Andrew Greene and Chris Lovejoy sat huddled in brown monastic robes Friday, reveling in the aroma of incense and the sounds of recorded early Christian chants. At Lindero Canyon Middle School in Agoura Hills, they were participants in the Old World fair, designed to give the school’s seventh-graders a feel for life as it once was.

Students staffed dozens of booths that presented slices of life from various cultures in the distant past. There were wizards, fortune tellers, African witch doctors and Aztec princesses.

In one booth, Katia Kravtchenko was decked out in black fortune-teller garb, complete with scarf and earrings, demonstrating the fine art of bartering.

“You have to drive a hard bargain,” she said, keeping a jealous watch over a dozen tiny wizard dolls, paper fortunes wrapped in ribbons and three wooden jewelry boxes.

“There are some real hard barterers here,” said Catheryne Khmara, a parent who also teaches at the school. “There are some people here who won’t even trade unless you’ve got something they really want.”

Khmara, like some of the other parents and teachers who participated, was in costume. She was a medieval maiden topped with a pink, flowered hairpiece.

At one booth, Samira Maknoon, dressed as an Aztec princess, was ready to barter away her colorful pottery. At another, Elizabeth Sugleris, Jamie Erlich and Carly Croick touted the wonders of astrology.

African voodooist Steve Wohl sat in a chair under a canopy, wearing a black wig, a nose ring, and holding a black cane with a tiny white human skull attached to the top.

“It would be cool to be one there [in ancient Africa] because you are very respected,” he said.