A quick follow-up:  if I remove the line

  #+startup: hideblocks

From the file, I can at least open the file as normal.  There must be
something wrong in one of my blocks but the file is 0.5MB in size.  I've
tried bisecting but haven't tracked it down yet.

It would be great if the user-error message would indicate a line number
or a headline or something to help debug!

thanks,
eric

-- 
: Eric S Fraga (0xFFFCF67D), Emacs 24.4.50.1, Org release_8.3beta-360-ge17ee8