2025
AUGUST 31, 2025
Hour 1: Kathryn Connolly, Supervisors or Westport House in Co. Mayo, Ireland which has a history dating back to the days of Grace O’Malley, the Pirate Queen. Amazing story!
Hour 2: Sir John Leslie, known as Jack and called “Uncle Jack” by all who loved him. He died 7 and a half months before his 100th birthday and was an amazing source of worldd history especially since his first cousin was Sir Winston Churchill. Uncle Jack was impressed, from Ireland, into WWII and was captured during his first week of Service in France and placed in a German POW prison camp because he served as an officer in the Irish Guards where he spent five years until the Allied forces declared victory in 1945. Uncle Jack is a fountain of historic stories, family stories and ghost stories given that ghost are notorious guests at the castles owned and inhabited over the years by members of the Leslie family.
This hour wraps up with travel tips, especially related to navigating airports delivered by Stephanie Abrams.
Hour 3: Tim Jenisen, a pioneer in the development of digital art for animated films. He is the founder of NewTek, a company that revolutionized video production with its TriCaster technology. In 1985, Jenison founded NewTek in a garage, and invented such video innovations as the Video Toaster and Lightwave 3D, both of which dramatically lowered the cost of television production. In 2005, this NewTek founder was inducted into the San Antonio Inventors Hall of Fame as the “Father of Desktop Video.”
This interivew focuses on the documentary, Tim’s Vermeer, in which Tim is followed over years when he is inspired by a book by the Englislh Artist, David Hockney, to investigate if the Dutch painter Vermeer used a technical device(s) to create his painting whose settings are all place beside a window in his studio. Tim reproduces Vermeer’s studio in an underutilized warehouse on the grounds of his Texas video production campus in order to PAINT A VERMEER!
Tim Jenison, a man who had never used a paint brush even to paint a wall, sets about to duplicate what he believes are the conditions under which Vermeer produced his artwork. . . and he paints a remarkable and exact Vermeer painting!! This journey takes him to Buckingham Palace to see the actual painting that this unskilled painter will reproduce in Queen Elizabeth’s private collection and to Vermeer’s historic painting studio, now a museum in The Netherlands.
The film was directeded by Teller, of Penn & Teller fame. When Teller learned from Jenison, a friend, that he planned to create this Vermeer painting, he knew there was a story there that many would be interested in!
Travel Expert Stephanie Abrams saw the film at a film festival and later bought the DVD so that she could share her experience traveling-by-film with Tim Jenison and following his unique experience producing this amazing work of “forgery” that is truly remarkable.
This hour, and each hour of this episode of Travel WITH Stephanie Abrams, is packed with history, culture, and visits to Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands which audiences will enjoy, be amazed and learn from!
Hi Stephanie, Can’t find an email for you. Hope you see this. I enjoyed your novel, RUMORS; it gets the reader right into it on page 1 and doesn’t stop. Thanks!
Wow, Laura! Thanks for the update! I hope you’ll share your remarks at the site of the online bookseller where you bought RUMORS and I hope your husband reads it too . . . and then tell everyone you know how much you enjoyed it! If you can get a group of 5 or more people who have read RUMORS together, I’d love to schedule an online MeetUp to talke with your circle of friends and/or book club! I’m planning to do a number of these book chats online in 2021 so there’s time for people to order RUMORS in print or ebook and have time to read it before whatever date we decide on. More info is provided in the section at sAbrams.net called “ABOUT.’ Keep in touch! Hugs, Stephanie